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From loving one you must love all men-even all parties, and, as Stevenson smilingly says, cast your vote, into the bargain! Whitman's morality, then, is in no sense prohibitive. There are no negative virtues. Some deformative restraint has caused disease, wretchedness, crime. We who are free and kind must inevitably help those who are down to rise to a fuller realization of themselves, to advance.

Furthermore, Whitman's practice was fully up to his preaching. "Not content with merely blowing the trumpet for the battle of well-doing, he has given to his precepts the authority of his own brave example." Before the war, he had been always "peering, absorbing, translating," as he lounged about his "Mannahatta" and tramped out into the country; down along the Mississippi and back, mingling with all who greeted him-tax-collector, thief, prostitute; scorning none, taking and giving a bit of wisdom, and passing on.

With the war, he went south, where, in Washington, during the troublous spring of 1862, Lincoln, gazing out of a window, saw this workingman saunter majestically past with a stride that meant six feet and two hundred pounds under the calico shirt open at the throat. The President noted the defiant poise of the bearded grey head, and kindly gleaming eyes. Turning to a friend, he exclaimed, "There goes a man!”

"Whitman was fifty-one years old then," Hubbard tells us; "he had an independence, a self-sufficiency, a gentleness that told that although he had a giant's strength, he did not use it like a giant. He loved men as brothers, yet his brothers after the flesh understood him not; he loved children-they turned to him instinctively-but he had no children of his own; he loved women, and yet this strongly sexed and manly man never loved a woman.'

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There was ample scope for his powers in that part of the service to his country which Whitman chose to perform. None too many volunteered to undergo-hardly anyone else actually could have undergone the tremendous strain of serving as surgeon, nurse, friend and priest to hundreds of

wounded who crowded the hospitals at Washington. He wrote countless letters for the men to homes both South and North. He went about distributing clean clothes, tobacco or apples-"a patient, helpful, reverend man; full of kind speeches." Here he gave his life. His splendid health was never regained after the long nights of watching, even though "with feet mortis'd in granite" he lived many years to know the "amplitude of time."

"Well, boy," said he to a young visitor, while he sat in his wheel-chair waiting death, "you may grow until you are thirty and then be as wise as you ever will be. Haven't you noticed that men of sixty have no clearer vision than men of thirty? The reason is that we are ashamed to shove out and be ourselves. Jesus expressed his own individuality perhaps more than any man we know, so he wields a wider influence than any other, even though he was only about thirty when he died."

Whitman ever struggled toward truth, and, through the echoes of the tiny brown-feathered bird's shrill grief, through his ecstatic songs of wonder, pain and faith in the present, saw, with a clearness that led him to quietly submit to the scoffing of his fellows, far into the future. He saw America leavening the world; American literature becoming at length the world's literature-the sure precursor of a triumphant democracy. He fondly believed that in "Leaves of Grass" he had embodied the first suggestive hints for the outline of that literature. For us of to-day, he has offered in this rough, spontaneous spirit-biography, a chance to at least come into healthy and inspiring contact with his own ideal personality.

R. W. Wescott.

HUNTING-SONG OF CEPHALUS.

Come, Laelaps, away! o'er the billows of green
That olive-capped rise thro' the golden blue sheen
Of thin mantling mist, in the cool of the morn
Ere the hunter replies to the lark with his horn;
Thro' forest and meadow, glen, upland and dale,
Come, bay to the pack and away on the trail!

We'll track the gray, shadowy fox from his den,
And the gleaming-tusk'd wild boar that raves thro' the fen;
With leafy-green cuirass and helmet adight,

And Perseus-like, wrapped in invisible night;
Thro' forest and meadow, glen, upland and dale,
Come, bay to the pack and away on the trail!

When Phoebus his flaming wand stretches abroad
To bid us enow of the spear and the sword,
All hail to the notes of the merry brook's lyre,
And the dryads that free us of earthly desire;
Thro' forest and meadow, glen, upland and dale,
Come, bay to the pack and away on the trail!

W. Lesley Mason.

NOTABILIA.

It is the customary thing nowadays to criticize the Baseball Team. Even the News, the ultra-conservative News, that speaks only when it is sure of college sentiment, has editorialized it of late. So the LIT. feels safe in saying that the game that the Yale Baseball Team plays is not the game that a Yale Baseball Team should play.

There are various degrees of dirty play, from rattling the visiting players to spiking them on the bases, from hooting at the umpire's decisions to mobbing him as an object lesson. The Team has not as yet gone irretrievably too far; but in the last few games it has shown a deplorable tendency toward professional ball, dirty ball. The Team in the field sounds like an agitated hen roost, on the bench, when the catcher is after a foul fly or the pitcher a bit rattled, it is but little better.

The pity is that this style of play is not impulsive, it is deliberate. For the veterans, with notable exceptions, are the leaders in the movement. Perhaps they are tired of losing games, and think that dirty ball may win? Perhaps they feel that they must fight fire with fire? Perhaps they are-Perhaps they do-But in these days, when college athletes threaten overmuch to degenerate into mere gladiators, the gentleman-athlete should be assiduously cultivated.

The Team seems to be a very uncertain quantity this year. Its playing in the second Georgetown game was undeniably stupid, in the second Penn game brilliant and brainy, in the Maine game stupid again. After all's said and done, brains compare pretty well with brawn. Good fielding cuts off hits, a good batting eye gets them; but good brain work cuts off and gets runs. With the pick of the brawn and the brains that Yale develops, there is no reason why the team should not actually win some sort of a championship—even if it does play clean ball.

J. N. G.

PORTFOLIO.

The two men stared across the stained table, one with dull eyes lighting up only when they fell on the half-empty bottle before him, the other shifting his gaze

WATSON'S

“OL' FRIEN’, JOHN RILEY."

from the stupid face opposite to the heavy

door leading into the hall, then back to his companion's empty glass.

on me, Tom."

"There, don't be bashful," he said. “It's

Watson poured himself another glass. "Thanks," he muttered. "You're my frien', my ol' frien', my bes' frien'. I'll 'member this. I'd do anything f'r m'ol' frien'."

He of the shifting eyes gently stroked his carefully curled moustache to conceal a smile. Then he peered slily down at the long folded paper projecting from his pocket. He scrutinized his companion's heavy countenance carefully, and then suddenly drew out the document.

"Here, Tom," he whispered hurriedly. "Here's a little thing I want you to do. Of no consequence, of course. I know you'll oblige an old friend. Just sign this. Here, I've got a pen. Down below there, at the right."

Watson carefully set down his glass and took the proffered pen obligingly. He broke into an expansive smile and waved his hand expressively in air.

“Cert❜ly, Riley, cert'ly. Like t'oblige 'n'ol' frien', ye know. You're my ol', true frien'. No man ever had better frien' 'n John Riley is. John Riley

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"Of course," the other interrupted. "But just sign this while I think of it. Then we'll talk."

"Cert❜ly, cert'ly. Like t'oblige 'n ol' frien'."

He bent over the paper still muttering about his "ol' frien', John Riley." Laboriously he scratched the pen along the line indicated, his head almost touching the table in his effort to follow the writing in the dim light. Riley lolled back in apparent indifference, but his hands gripped his chair seat until his knuckles whitened.

Watson at last raised his head. "There, tha's done all ri'. Tha' do? Like t'oblige 'n ol' frien'."

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