WALT WHITMAN
WALT WHITMAN.
AN ADDRESS
BY
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
"LIBERTY IN LITERATURE."
Delivered in Philadelphia, Oct. 21, 1890. Also Funeral
Address Delivered at Harleigh, Camden, N. J.,
March 30, 1892.
WITH PORTRAIT OF WHITMAN.
AUTHORIZED EDITION.
New York;
THE TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY,
28 Lafayette Place.
Copyrighted, 1890,
BY
THE TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY.
TESTIMONIAL
TO
WALT WHITMAN.
Of all the placid hours in his peaceful life, those that Walt Whitmanspent on the stage of Horticultural Hall last night must have beenamong the most gratifying, says the Philadelphia Press of October 22,1890. To a testimonial, intended to cheer his declining years, notonly in a complimentary sense, came some eighteen hundred or morepeople to listen to a tribute to the aged poet by Col. Robert G.Ingersoll, such as seldom falls to the lot of living man to hear abouthimself.
On the stage sat many admirers of the venerable torch-bearer of modernpoetic thought, as Colonel Ingersoll described him, young and old, menand women. There were white beards, but none were so white as that ofthe author of "Leaves of Grass." He sat calm and sedate in his easywheeled chair, with his usual garb of gray, with his cloudy white hairfalling over his white, turned-down collar that must have been threeinches wide. No burst of eloquence from the orator's lips disturbedthat equanimity; no tribute of applause moved him from his habitualcalm.
And when the lecturer, having concluded, said, "We have met to-night tohonor ourselves by honoring the author of 'Leaves of Grass,'" and theaudience started to leave the hall, the man they had honored reachedforward with his cane and attracted Colonel Ingersoll's attention.
"Do not leave yet," said Colonel Ingersoll, "Mr. Whitman has a word tosay."
This is what he said, and no more characteristic thing ever fell fromthe poet's lips or flowed from his pen:
"After all, my friends, the main factors being the curious testimonycalled personal presence and face to face meeting, I have come here tobe among you and show myself, and thank you with my living voice forcoming, and Robert Ingersoll for speaking. And so with such brieftestimony of showing myself, and such good will and gratitude, I bidyou hail and farewell."
THE ADDRESS.
Let us Put Wreaths on the Brows of the Living.
I.
In the year 1855 the American people knew but little of books. Theirideals, their models, were English. Young and Pollok, Addison andWatts were regarded as great poets. Some of the more reckless readThomson's "Seasons" and the poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott. Afew, not quite orthodox, delighted in the mechanical monotony of Pope,and the really wicked—those lost to all religious shame—wereworshipers of Shakespeare. The really orthodox Protestan