He was always skilled at that. Yet since Drum-Taps, published the month following Lincoln’s murder (as he always called the assassination), his heart had been inclined more in the direction of prose. It seemed to me that around 1865 something important had taken place to change him profoundly— in addition to the end of the war or the murder, I mean, something unconnected to public events. I wasn’t certain what or just how. Such was my feeling at the time I enthusiastically accepted Anne’s suggestion, resolving to commence a record of my Mickle Street visits. Practically every day, usually after dinner but sometimes in the morning as well, I found him in either the front parlor or the bedroom. The downstairs room was furnished with a davenport and chairs and decorated with two busts, one of Elias Hicks, the other of W himself. Hicks was the Quaker divine who farmed on Long Island and whose common-sense democratic theology led to a great schism amongst Quakers. When W was a young boy, he heard Hicks, who must have been about eighty years old, preach a lesson, an event that had gained some powerful hold on W’s imagination and philosophy.
What do You think about Walt Whitman's Secret (2010)?
