Walt Whitman; His Life and Work
Description:... This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...is all about the book. The rest of the letter is family affairs, &c." W. D. O'C.) This was a happy month for Whitman. George, who had been for some time a prisoner of war, was exchanged, and then came the longdeferred appointment for Walt himself, to a clerkship in the Indian Bureau, in the Department of the Interior. He writes to Trowbridge on March 3: --"I believe I told you I was working a few hours a day, a sufficiently remunerative desk in the Indian Office--I spend a couple of hours day or evening in the hospitals." The next day Lincoln took the oath of office for the second time. Whitman saw him driving from the Capitol. "He was in his plain twohorse barouche, and look'd very much worn and tired; the lines, indeed, of vast responsibilities, intricate questions and demands of life and death, cut deeper than ever upon his dark brown face; yet all the old goodness, tenderness, sadness and canny shrewdness, underneath the furrows." It was the last time, apparently, that he looked upon Lincoln's face. The two men had never spoken. Returning to Brooklyn for a few weeks to make final arrangements for printing-DrumTaps at his own expense, Whitman was at home with his mother when the news came on the morning of April 15 that the President had been shot the night before. "Mother prepared breakfast--and other meals afterward--as usual; but not a mouthful was eaten all day by either of us. We each drank half a cup of coffee; that was all. Little was said. We got every newspaper morning and evening, and the frequent extras of that period, and pass'd them silently to each other." It was lilac-time in the straggling, half-rural Brooklyn streets, and the sight and odor of the blossoms were at once and forever...
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