It was 40 to 50
minutes long, altogether without notes, in a good voice, low enough
and not too low, style easy, rather colloquial (over and over again
saying "you" to Whitman who sat opposite,) sometimes markedly
impassion'd, once or twice humorous--amid his whole speech, from
interior fires and volition, pulsating and swaying like a first-class
Andalusian dancer.
And such a critical dissection, and flattering summary! The
Whitmanites for the first time in their lives were fully satisfied;
and that is saying a good deal, for they have not put their claims
low, by a long shot. Indeed it was a tremendous talk! Physically and
mentally Ingersoll (he had been working all day in New York, talking
in court and in his office,) is now at his best, like mellow'd wine,
or a just ripe apple; to the artist-sense, too, looks at his best--not
merely like a bequeath'd Roman bust or fine smooth marble Cicero-head,
or even Greek Plato; for he is modern and vital and vein'd and
American, and (far more than the age knows,) justifies us all.
We cannot give a full report of this most remarkable talk and supper
(which was curiously conversational and Greek-like) but must add the
following significant bit of it.
After the speaking, and just before the close, Mr. Whitman reverted to
Colonel Ingersoll's tribute to his poems, pronouncing it the capsheaf
of all commendation that he had ever receiv'd. Then, his mind still
dwelling upon the Colonel's religious doubts, he went on to say that
what he himself had in his mind when he wrote "Leaves of Grass" was
not only to depict American life, as it existed, and to show the
triumphs of science, and the poetry in common things, and the full of
an individual democratic humanity, for the aggregate, but also to show
that there was behind all something which rounded and completed it.
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