LITERARY PAPERS 
376 
possibilities as a future power in the greater development of the 
race, apart from her maternal qualities; everywhere is claimed 
for her equality and equal share in the freedom she is to be the 
co-worker with man to gain. In comparatively few parts of 
the poet’s works are the concrete affairs of life in the lines just 
mentioned discussed; but when Whitman is moved to give 
expression to his aspiring opinion, he does so forcibly, with 
the least weight on the material properties, which he indeed 
considers insignificant before the higher gains of character 
and personality. 
He tells us that — 
“The place where a great city stands is not the place of stretch’d wharves, 
docks, manufactures, deposits of produce merely, 
Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or shops selling goods 
from the rest of the earth, 
Nor the place of the best libraries, and schools, nor the place where money 
is plentiest;” 
but where “ common words and deeds ” exist as monuments 
to heroes, there thrift and prudence are in their places, — 
“Where the men and women think lightly of the laws, 
Where the slave and the master of slaves ceases, 
Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of 
elected persons, 
Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside 
authority, 
Where the citizen is always the head and ideal, and President, Mayor, 
Governor, and what not, are agents for pay, 
Where children are taught to be laws to themselves, and to depend on 
themselves, 
Where equanimity is illustrated in affairs, 
Where speculations on the soul are encouraged, 
Where women walk in public processions in the streets the same as the 
men, 
Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same as the 
men.” 
And as a blow against making gods of all the relative 
acquisitions on the material plane, he adds, “and nothing 
