Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/151

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THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL
135

used to be commanded by the best-known sea captain of modern years, Joseph Conrad.

It must be a brave life to be a tugboat skipper. To con the Betty up the shining reaches of the Delaware in a summer dusk, the soft flow of air keeping one's pipe in a glow, that good musk of the Jersey pines tingling in the nostril. Then to turn over the wheel to the mate while one goes below to tackle a tugboat supper, with plenty of dripping steak and fried murphies and coffee with condensed milk. And a tugboat crew sleep at home o' nights, too. Think of it—a sailor all day long, and yet sleep in your own bed at home!


THE WHITMAN CENTENNIAL

Yesterday—Memorial Day—was a true Walt Whitman day. The ferries thronged with cheerful people, the laughing, eager throng at the Camden terminal, piling aboard trolley cars for a holiday outing—the clang and thud of marching bands, the flags and flowers and genial human bustle, pervaded now and then by that note of tribute to the final mystery—surely all this was just such a scene as Walt loved to watch and ponder. And going on pilgrimage with two English editors to Mickle street and Harleigh Cemetery, it was not strange that our thoughts were largely with the man whose hundredth birthday we bear in mind today.

By just so far (it seems to me) as we find it painful to read Walt Whitman, by just so far we