(Read Before the Louisiana Historical Association at New Orleans on April 15, 1914, by William Kernan Dart.)

Literary America is today building up what will hereafter be known as the period of Whitman worship. This pathfinder of a new type of versification, and the prophet of progressive ideals of life and of politics is today the subject both of constant study, of constant criticism, and of constand admiration. The ramifications of his works, of his thoughts, and of his habits of living are discussed everywhere, and though his life in New Orleans was of but short duration, still its crumbs are eagerly devoured by the proselyte of Whitman.

Of the early days of Walt Whitman, little is known, and more especially is this true of his vagabond life. Concerning some of his adventures he was deliberately silent; his life during these obscure periods will doubtless never be laid bare to public scrutiny; and it will be in as great a mist as is Shakespeare's youthful career. The best one can do to complete the patch-work of his journeyman days is to glean through the scattered writings that came from his pen as he wandered from city to city and from newspaper to newspaper. Perhaps it is better that it should be so, for the youthful escapades of men of Whitmans type are likely to have too great a Rabelaisian spice to enrich idealistic literature. To see a genius without his halo, when the fire of passion is still active, is very often to be given a vision with a suggestion of a lack of respectability and an inattention to that code of morals by which the average man is governed. Whitman has himself confessed that his adolescent days were not such as should serve as a model to young men, and vague rumors have floated down to our generation of his rather accentuated fondness for the other sex. "My life," he wrote Symonds, "young manhood, times South, etc., have been jolly bodily, and doubtless open to criticism. Tho' unmarried, I have had six children-two

are dead-one living. Southern grandchild, fine boy, writes to me occasionally-circumstances (connected with their fortune and benefit) have separated me from intimate relations."

This reference, published after his death, has given rise to a variety of speculation concerning his Southern life and more especially about his life in New Orleans. But his career in the South will forever be shadowed in obscurity. His stay in New Orleans was brief, dating from March to June, 1848, and whatever intimacies he contracted with men and women while there will always be unknown. If there was a child, assuming there was but one, unless his disposition was that of an animal-an insinuation likely to be resented by his followers-it was born after his departure. Its name and its mother's name are unknown to the people of New Orleans. The contemporary directories of New Orleans show no one named Whitman for any of the years subsequent to and long after Whitman's departure. The old inhabitants of the city, and its veteran journalists are altogether ignorant of any reminiscences connected with Whitman. There is, nevertheless, sufficient extranous evidence to furnish a skeleton of his life in New Orleans, and to give an outline of his contributions to the newspaper of whose staff he was a member, as well as to give a bare sketch of his life from the day he left New York to his departure to the North.

The manner in which he happened to go to New Orleans is best described in his own language. As the result of political and managerial disagreements he had left the Brooklyn Eagle and was casting about for a new berth. "Being out of a job, I was offered impromptu (it happened between the acts one night in the lobby of the old Broadway Theatre, near Pearl street, New York City), a good chance to go down to New Orleans on the staff of the Crescent, a daily to be started there with plenty of capital behind it, in opposition to the Picayune. One of the owners, Mr. McClure, who was north buying material, met me walk

ing in the lobby, and though that was our first acquaintance, after fifteen minutes talk (and a drink) we made a formal bargain, and Mr. McClure paid me $200 down to bind the contract and bear my expenses to New Orleans. I started two days afterwards; had a leisurely good time, as the paper wasn't to be out in three or four weeks. I enjoyed my journey and Louisiana venture very much."

With him went his brother Jeff, and the voyage is usually described by his biographers as "by way of Pennsylvania and Virginia, crossing the Alleghanies, and taking a steamer down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers" (Perry, Life of Whitman, p. 42). In the early issues of the Crescent there are articles entitled "Excerpts from a Traveller's Note Book," which depict a journey similar to the course taken by the Whitmans.. They are unsigned, but they are written in the jerky prose style common to nearly all of Whitman's uninspired works, and they discuss in a general way things that were of interest to Whitman-the doings of humanity, the odds and ends who traverse the world, and the occasional incidents of steamboat life. The first issue of the Crescent was published March 6, 1848, and the only vessel to arrive in the harbor of New Orleans from Wheeling was the St. Cloud, which is entered among the newspaper steamboat arrivals on February 26, 1848. It is a fair presumption that this boat brought the two Whitmans to New Orleans, for the records do not show any other entries from the Alleghany country for either a month previous or a month later than the coming of the St. Cloud. "Having crossed the Alleghanies during Saturday night, and spent the ensuing day in weary stages from Uniontown onwards, wa arrived at Wheeling a little after 10 o'clock on Sunday night, and went on board the steamer St. Cloud, a freight and packet boat, lying at the wharf there with the steam all up and ultimately bound for New Orleans." (The Crescent, Friday, March 10, 1848). He describes the Ohio River in no complimentary terms: "Like as in many other matters, people who travel on the Ohio (that most beautiful of

words) for the first time will stand a chance of being disappointed. In poetry and romance, these rivers are talked of as though they were cleanly streams; but it is astonishing what a difference is made by the simple fact that they are always excessively muddy-mud, indeed, being the prevailing character both afloat and ashore. This, when one thinks of it, is not only reasonable enough, but unavoidable in the very circumstance of the case. Yet, it destroys at once the principal beauty of the rivers. There is no romance in a mass of yellowish brown liquid.. It is marvellous, though, how easily a traveller gets to drinking it and washing with it. What an india-rubber principle there is, after all, in humanity."

He pictures the inconvenience of river travel, passenger traffic being considered secondary to that of freight, and he is amused at the miscellaneous cargo taken aboard, which included pork, lead, coffee, leather, groceries, dry goods, agricultural implements, live stock, and an infinity of other commodities. An early and a good breakfast was had, the river banks were covered with produce, and the stopping places were ever thronged with all sorts and conditions of idlers. The falls of the Ohio below Louisville were crossed just as the Lachine Rapids in the St. Lawrence are crossed today by tourist steamers and the incident was an interesting one to Whitman, giving rise in his mind to the theory of a possible connecting canal. The country from Louisville down is passed with the reflection that it is a long, monotonous stretch. He prophecied no great future for Cairo, Ill., a guess which the passing years have verified. "Cairo, at the junction of the Mississippi, pointed our passage into the great Father of Waters. Immense sums of money have been spent to make Cairo something like what a place with such a name ought to be. But with the exception of its position, which is unrivalled for business purposes, everything about it seems unfortunate. The point on which it is situated is low, and liable to be overflowed at every high flood. Besides, it is unwholesomely wet, at the best. It is doubtful

whether Cairo will ever be any 'great shakes,' except in the way of ague."

Cincinnati is mentioned as a dirty little city, with business prospering, and is dismissed with the further comment that "with New York and New Orleans, Cincinnati undoubtedly makes the trio of business places in the republicthough Philadelphia must not be forgotten either." Louisville "has a substantial look to him who walks through it for the first time" and has many noble and hospitable citizens, whose family circles make a happy time for him who gets on visiting terms with them."

These fragments tell us probably nearly all we shall ever know of Whitman's voyage to New Orleans. The Middle and the South West was unfolding its magnificence to his eye, and though the impression was that of a crude, undeveloped nation, to one of his shrewd perception the future prosperity was evident.

Whitman did not reside in New Orleans proper, but in a suburb, the city of Lafayette, which has, however, been long since consolidated with New Orleans. With whom he lived and in what portion of the town it is impossible now to tell, but from a remark in one of his contributions to the Crescent his quarters were small, though ample for one of his roving disposition, for he was a self-confessed lounger, and apparently kept late hours. What little data there is to be found on that subject is to be found in a Crescent article narrating a walk about town.

On March 6, 1848, a Monday, No. One of the Crescent presented itself as a contestant in the field of New Orleans newspapers. It was published by the firm of Hayes & McClure at No. 95 St. Charles street at a subscription price of eight dollars a year or fifteen cents a week. It was neither better nor worse than the usual newspaper of that time, being a large four-sheet 8vo. paper, printed in clear type and managed in the leisurely fashion of the average village journal of our age. Its contents were mainly local, containing here and there a belated European, Central