JET.39.] TO HARRISON BLAKE. 347
to see wonders, as it were, sets me upon a hill or in the midst of a plain, stirs me well up, and then throws in a thousand of brick. Though rude, and sometimes ineffectual, it is a great primitive poem, an alarum or trumpet- note ringing through the American camp. Wonderfully like the Orientals, too, considering that when I asked him if he had read them, he answered, " No : tell me about them."
I did not get far in conversation with him, two more being present, and among the few things which I chanced to say, I remember that one was, in answer to him as representing Amer ica, that I did not think much of America or of politics, and so on, which may have been some what of a damper to him.
Since I have seen him, I find that I am not disturbed by any brag or egoism in his book. He may turn out the least of a braggart of all, hav ing a better right to be confident.
He is a great fellow.
There is in Alcott s diary an account of this interview with Whitman, and the Sunday morn ing in Ward Beecher s Brooklyn church, from which a few passages may be taken. Hardly any person met by either of these Concord friends in V their later years made so deep an impression on both as did this then almost unknown poet and
