This great man, of whom Carlyle observes (I have looked up the passage since I came home), "a kindlier, meeker, braver heart has seldom looked upon the sky in this world," had ridden out from the city for the last time in his life "to take one other look at the azure firmament and green mosaic pavements and the strange carpentry and arras work of this noble palace of a world." As the old story has it, the young student "came pricking on hastily, complaining that they went at such a pace as gave him little chance of keeping up with them.

One of the party made answer that the blame lay with the horse of Don Miguel de Cervantes, whose trot was of the speediest.

He had hardly pronounced the name when the student dismounted and, touching the hem of Cervantes' left sleeve, said, 'Yes, yes, it is indeed the maimed perfection, the all-famous, the delightful writer, the joy and darling of the Muses! You are that brave Miguel.'" It may seem absurd to some in this cool and calculating twentieth century that any one should indulge in such vain imaginings as I have described--and yet, why not?
All things are as we see them.

I once heard a man--a modern man, living to-day--tell with a hush in his voice, and a peculiar light in his eye, how, walking in the outskirts of an unromantic town in New Jersey, he came suddenly upon a vigorous, bearded, rather rough-looking man swinging his stick as he walked, and stopping often at the roadside and often looking up at the sky.

I shall never forget the curious thrill in his voice as he said: "And THAT was Walt Whitman." And thus quite absurdly intoxicated by the possibilities of the road, I let the big full afternoon slip by--I let slip the rich possibilities of half a hundred farms and scores of travelling people--and as evening began to fall I came to a stretch of wilder country with wooded hills and a dashing stream by the roadside.