Which of these two he
prefers, a man with any youth still left in him will decide rightly
for himself. He would rather be houseless than denied a pass-key;
rather go without food than partake of stalled ox in stiff,
respectable society; rather be shot out of hand than direct his life
according to the dictates of the world.
He knows or thinks nothing of the Maine Laws, the Puritan sourness,
the fierce, sordid appetite for dollars, or the dreary existence of
country towns. A few wild story-books which delighted his childhood
form the imaginative basis of his picture of America. In course of
time, there is added to this a great crowd of stimulating details -
vast cities that grow up as by enchantment; the birds, that have gone
south in autumn, returning with the spring to find thousands camped
upon their marshes, and the lamps burning far and near along populous
streets; forests that disappear like snow; countries larger than
Britain that are cleared and settled, one man running forth with his
household gods before another, while the bear and the Indian are yet
scarce aware of their approach; oil that gushes from the earth; gold
that is washed or quarried in the brooks or glens of the Sierras; and
all that bustle, courage, action, and constant kaleidoscopic change
that Walt Whitman has seized and set forth in his vigorous, cheerful,
and loquacious verses.
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