the young man who composedly perilled his life and lost it,
has done exceeding well for himself; while the man who has
not perilled his life, and retains it to old age in riches
and ease, has perhaps achieved nothing for himself worth
mentioning; and that only that person has no great prudence
to learn, who has learnt to prefer real long-lived things,
and favours body and soul the same, and perceives the
indirect surely following the direct, and what evil or good
he does leaping onward and waiting to meet him again, and who
in his spirit, in any emergency whatever, neither hurries nor
avoids death."


There is much that is Christian in these extracts,
startlingly Christian. Any reader who bears in mind
Whitman's own advice and "dismisses whatever insults his own
soul" will find plenty that is bracing, brightening, and
chastening to reward him for a little patience at first. It
seems hardly possible that any being should get evil from so
healthy a book as the LEAVES OF GRASS, which is simply
comical wherever it falls short of nobility; but if there be
any such, who cannot both take and leave, who cannot let a
single opportunity pass by without some unworthy and unmanly
thought, I should have as great difficulty, and neither more
nor less, in recommending the works of Whitman as in lending
them Shakespeare, or letting them go abroad outside of the
grounds of a private asylum.