freedom's athletes." And he has had no difficulty in
introducing his optimism: it fitted readily enough with his
system; for the average man is truly a courageous person and
truly fond of living. One of Whitman's remarks upon this
head is worth quotation, as he is there perfectly successful,
and does precisely what he designs to do throughout: Takes
ordinary and even commonplace circumstances; throws them out,
by a happy turn of thinking, into significance and something
like beauty; and tacks a hopeful moral lesson to the end.


"The passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers,
cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, he says, the
love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons,
drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, -
all is an old unvaried sign of the unfailing perception of
beauty, and of a residence of the poetic in outdoor people."


There seems to me something truly original in this choice of
trite examples. You will remark how adroitly Whitman begins,
hunters and woodmen being confessedly romantic. And one
thing more. If he had said "the love of healthy men for the
female form," he would have said almost a silliness; for the
thing has never been dissembled out of delicacy, and is so
obvious as to be a public nuisance. But by reversing it, he
tells us something not unlike news; something that sounds
quite freshly in words; and, if the reader be a man, gives
him a moment of great self-satisfaction and spiritual
aggrandisement. In many different authors you may find