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    [Illustration]



    [Illustration: THE OPEN ROAD.

      Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
      Healthy, free, the world before me,
      The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.

                                     (_Song of the Open Road_).]



    A. DAY. WITH
    WALT
    WHITMAN

    BY MAURICE CLARE

    [Illustration]

    LONDON
    HODDER & STOUGHTON




_In the same Series._


  _Tennyson._
  _Wordsworth._
  _Browning._
  _Burns._
  _Byron._
  _Keats._
  _E. B. Browning._
  _Whittier_.
  _Rossetti._
  _Shelley._
  _Longfellow._
  _Scott._
  _Coleridge._
  _Morris._




A DAY WITH WALT WHITMAN.


About six o'clock on a midsummer morning in 1877, a tall old man awoke,
and was out of bed next moment,--but he moved with a certain slow
leisureliness, as one who will not be hurried. The reason of this
deliberate movement was obvious,--he had to drag a paralysed leg, which
was only gradually recovering its ability and would always be slightly
lame. Seen more closely, he was not by any means so old as at first
sight one might imagine. His snow-white hair and almost-white grey beard
indicated some eighty years: but he was vigorous, erect and rosy: his
clear grey-blue eyes were bright with a "wild-hawk look,"--his face was
firm and without a line. An air of splendid vital force, despite his
infirmity, was diffused from his whole person, and defied the fact of
his actual age, which was two years short of sixty.

Dressing with the same large, leisurely gestures as characterized him in
everything, Walt Whitman was presently attired in his invariable suit of
grey: and by the time the clock touched half-past seven, he was