)
If it is worth while I might add that there was a small but
well-appointed amateur-theatre up Broadway, with the usual stage,
orchestra, pit, boxes, &c., and that I was myself a member for some
time, and acted parts in it several times--"second parts" as they were
call'd. Perhaps it too was a lesson, or help'd that way; at any rate
it was full of fun and enjoyment.
And so let us turn off the gas. Out in the brilliancy of the
foot-lights--filling the attention of perhaps a crowded audience, and
making many a breath and pulse swell and rise--O so much passion and
imparted life!--over and over again, the season through--walking,
gesticulating, singing, reciting his or her part--But then sooner or
later inevitably wending to the flies or exit door--vanishing to
sight and ear--and never materializing on this earth's stage again!
SOME PERSONAL AND OLD-AGE JOTTINGS
Anything like unmitigated acceptance of my "Leaves of Grass" book, and
heart-felt response to it, in a popular however faint degree, bubbled
forth as a fresh spring from the ground in England in 1876. The time
was a critical and turning point in my personal and literary life. Let
me revert to my memorandum book, Camden, New Jersey, that year, fill'd
with addresses, receipts, purchases, &c., of the two volumes pub'd
then by myself--the "Leaves," and the "Two Rivulets"--some home
customers, for them, but mostly from the British Islands. I was
seriously paralyzed from the Secession war, poor, in debt, was
expecting death, (the doctors put four chances out of five against
me,)--and I had the books printed during the lingering interim to
occupy the tediousness of glum days and nights.
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