Whitman's  intense  Americanism,  his  unlimited  be-
lief in  the  future  of  These  States  (as,  with  reverential


WALT   WHITMAN.  1 27

capitals,  he  loves  to  call  them),  made  the  war  a  period
of  great  trial  to  his  soul.  The  new  virtue,  Unionism,
of  which  he  is  the  sole  inventor,  seemed  to  have  fall-
en into  premature  unpopularity.  All  that  he  loved,
hoped,  or  hated,  hung  in  the  balance.  A.nd  the  game
of  war  was  not  only  momentous  to  him  in  its  issues  ;
it  sublimated  his  spirit  by  its  heroic  displays,  and  tor-
tured him  intimately  by  the  spectacle  of  its  horrors.
It  was  a  theatre,  it  was  a  place  of  education,  it  was
like  a  season  of  religious  revival.  He  watched  Lin-
coln going  daily  to  his  work  ;  he  studied  and  frater-
nized with  young  soldiery  passing  to  the  front  ;  above
all,  he  walked  the  hospitals,  reading  the  Bible,  dis-
tributing clean  clothes,  or  apples,  or  tobacco  ;  a  pa-
tient, helpful,  reverend  man,  full  of  kind  speeches.
His  memoranda  of  this  period  are  almost  bewilder-
ing to  read.  From  one  point  of  view  they  seem  those
of  a  district  visitor  ;  from  another,  they  look  like  the
formless  jottings  of  an  artist  in  the  picturesque.  More
than  one  woman,  on  whom  I  tried  the  experiment,
immediately  claimed  the  writer  for  a  fellow- woman.
