'26 



THE AMEBIC AN NATURALIST [Vol. LI 



hyperkinetic. Each word is worked out with some effort. 

 It is interesting to compare his chirography of Westford 

 Academy days (when he was about twenty-six) and that 

 when he was fifty-six (Fig. 14). There is the same loop 

 from the end of the word to cross the "t" in ''the"; the 

 s>ame scanting of the terminal "y"; the same form of the 

 capital "I." In thirty and indeed in the course of 

 forty years his handwriting showed no important change. 



Deliherateness.—Vroie^^ov Whitman's movements and 

 speech were characterized by deliberateness— another 

 characteristic of the classical type. It is, of course, a 

 mere caricature to say, as an unkind critic once did, that 

 his lectures consisted of pauses punctuated by sentences. 

 I mention this because it brings vividly to mind a way he 

 had in lecturing or addressing his seminar students to 

 pause frequently for some seconds looking pleasantly 

 over the room before beginning the next sentence. Even 

 in conversation he would turn a calm, thoughtful face to- 

 ward you and express himself clearly and deliberately. 

 So marked a deliberateness is not shown by his sibs, 

 but his brother shows something of it, and I am told that 

 his father was slow of speech. 



Literary Ability.— V^hWe "Whitman did not have a 

 strong internal impulse to write, what he published is 

 mostly characterized by high literary finish. Speaking of 

 cooperation between the organic and the inorganic sci- 

 ences he says (1895, p. iv) : 



Comparison of standpoints must benefit both sides. Cross fertiliza- 



pause to see how the individual vanishes in the abyss of the universal, 

 and how self determination dissolves in the pressure of the physicist's 

 fundamental postulate of inertia. The physicist may find it agreeable 



poseful adaptations an<l conscious, intelligent action. 



Again, speaking of Bonnet he says: 



With a zeal never daunted, and an ingenuity seldom baffled, never 

 defeated, he piled mountain upon mountain of negation, rolling Ossa 

 upon Olympus and Pelia upon Ossa, until the whole organic world 



