 CHAPTER 7 SHERMAN'S ARMY'S JUBLATION IT'S SUDDEN STOPPage When Sherman's armies, long after they left Atlanta, were marching through South and North Carolina, after leaving Savannah, the news of Lee's capitulation having been received, the men never moved a mile without, from some part of the line, sending up continued, inspiring shouts. At intervals all day long sounded out the wild music of those peculiar army cries. They would be commenced by one regiment or brigade, immediately taken up by others, and at length whole corn armies would join in these wild triumphant choruses. It was one of the characteristic expressions of the Western troops and became a habit, serving as a relief and outlet to the men, a vent for their feelings of victory, returning peace, etc. Morning, noon and afternoon, spontaneous, for occasion or without occasion, these huge strange cries differing from any other, echoing through the open air for many a mile, expressing youth, joy, wildness, irrepressible strength, and the ideas of advance and conquest, sounded along the swamps and uplands of the South, floating to the skies. There never were men that kept in better spirits in danger or defeat, what then could they do in victory, said one of the fifteenth corps to me afterwards. This exuberance continued till the armies arrived at Raleigh. There the news of the President's murder was received. Then no more shouts or yells for a week. All the marching was comparatively muffled. It was very significant, hardly a loud word or laugh in many of the regiments. A hush and silence pervaded all. No good portrait of Lincoln. Probably the reader has seen physiognomies, often old farmers, sea-captains and such, that behind their homeliness, or even ugliness, held superior points so subtle yet so palpable, making the real life of their faces almost as impossible to depict as a wild perfume or fruit taste, or a passionate tone of the living voice. And such was Lincoln's face, the peculiar color, the lines of it, the eyes, mouth, expression. Of technical beauty it had nothing, but to the eye of a great artist it furnished a rare study, a feast and fascination. The current portraits are all failures, most of them caricatures. Released Union Prisoners from South The released prisoners of war are now coming up from the southern prisons. I have seen a number of them. The site is worse than any site of battlefields, or any collection of wounded, even the bloodiest. There was, as a sample, one large boatload of several hundreds brought about the twenty-fifth to Annapolis, and out of the whole number only three individuals were able to walk from the boat. The rest were carried ashore and laid down in one place or another. Can those be men, those little, livid, brown, ash-streaked, monkey-looking dwarfs? Are they really not mummied, dwindled corpses? They lay there, most of them quite still, but with a horrible look in their eyes and skinny lips, often with not enough flesh on the lips to cover their teeth. Probably no more appalling sight was ever seen on this earth. There are deeds, crimes that may be forgiven, but this is not among them. It steeps its perpetrators in blackest, escapeless, endless damnation. Over fifty thousand have been compelled to die the death of starvation. Reader, did you ever try to realize what starvation actually is in those prisons and in a land of plenty? An indescribable meanness, tyranny, aggravating course of insults, almost incredible, was evidently the rule of treatment through all the southern military prisons. The dead there are not to be pitied as much as some of the living that come from there. If they can be called living, many of them are mentally imbecile and will never recuperate. Note, from a review of Andersonville, a story of southern military prisons, published serially in the Toledo Blade in 1879 and afterwards in book form, quote, there is a deep fascination in the subject of Andersonville, for that Golgotha, in which lie the whitening bones of thirteen thousand gallant young men, represents the dearest and costliest sacrifice of the war for the preservation of our national unity. It is a type two of its class. Its more than hundred hecatombs of dead represent several times that number of their brethren, for whom the prison gates of Belisle, Danville, Salisbury, Florence, Columbia and Cahaba, opened only in eternity. There are few families in the north who have not at least one dear relative or friend among the sixty thousand who's sad fortune it was to end their service for the union by lying down and dying for it in a southern prison pen. The manner of their death, the horrors that clustered thickly around every moment of their existence, the loyal unfaltering steadfastness with which they endured all that fate had brought them, has never been adequately told. It was not with them as with their comrades in the field, whose every act was performed in the presence of those whose duty it was to observe such matters and report them to the world. Even from the view of their friends in the north by the impenetrable veil which the military operations of the rebels drew around their so-called Confederacy, the people knew next to nothing of their career or their sufferings. Thousands died there less heated even than the hundreds who perished on the battlefield. Grant did not lose as many men killed outright in the terrible campaign from the wilderness to the James River, forty-three days of desperate fighting as died in July and August at Andersonville. Only twice as many died in that prison as fell from the day that Grant crossed the Rapidan till he settled down in the trenches before Petersburg. More than four times as many Union dead lie under the solemn sowing pines about that forlorn little village in southern Georgia, then mark the course of Sherman from Chattanooga to Atlanta. The nation stands aghast at the expenditure of life which attended the two bloody campaigns of 1864 which virtually crushed the Confederacy, but no one remembers that more Union soldiers died in the rear of the rebel lines than were killed in the front of them. The great military events which stamped out the rebellion drew attention away from the sad drama which starvation and disease played in those gloomy pines in the far recesses of somber southern forests." From a letter of Johnny Bouquet in New York Tribune, March 27, 1981. I visited Salisbury, North Carolina, the prison pen of the site of it from which nearly eleven thousand victims of southern politicians were buried, being confined in a pen without shelter, exposed to all the elements could do, to all the disease-herding animals together could create, and to all the starvation and cruelty and incompetent and intense catif government could accomplish. From the conversation and almost from the recollection of the northern people this place has dropped, but not so in the gossip of the Salisbury people, nearly all of whom say that the half was never told, that such was the nature of habitual outrage here, that when federal prisoners escaped, the townspeople harbored them in their barns, afraid the vengeance of God would fall on them, to deliver even their enemies back to such cruelty. Said one man at the Boyden House, who joined in the conversation one evening, there were often men buried out of that prison pen still alive. I had the testimony of a surgeon that he had seen them pulled out of the dead cart with their eyes open and taking notice, but too weak to lift a finger. There was not the least excuse for such treatment, as the Confederate government had seized every sawmill in the region, and could just as well have put up shelter for these prisoners as not, would being plentiful here. It will be hard to make any honest man in Salisbury say that there was the slightest necessity for those prisoners having to live in old tents, caves, and holes half full of water. Commissions were made to the Davis government against the officers in charge of it, but no attention was paid to them. Promotion was the punishment for cruelty there. The inmates were skeletons. Hell could have no terrors for any man who died there, except the inhuman keepers." Death of a Pennsylvania soldier. Frank H. Irwin, Company E. 93, Pennsylvania, died May 1, 65. My letter to his mother, dear madam. No doubt you and Frank's friends have heard the sad fact of his death in hospital here, through his uncle or the lady from Baltimore who took his things. I have not seen them, only heard of them visiting Frank. I will write you a few lines as a casual friend that sat by his deathbed. Your son, Corporal Frank H. Irwin, was wounded near Fort Fisher, Virginia, March 25, 1865. The wound was in the left knee, pretty bad. He was sent up to Washington, was received in Ward C, Armory Square Hospital, March 28. The wound became worse, and on the 4th of April the leg was amputated a little above the knee. The operation was performed by Dr. Bliss, one of the best surgeons in the Army. He did the whole operation himself. There was a good deal of bad matter gathered. The bullet was found in the knee. For a couple of weeks afterwards he was doing pretty well. I visited and sat by him frequently, as he was fond of having me. The last ten or twelve days of April I saw that his case was critical. He previously had some fever with cold spells. The last week in April he was much of the time flighty, but always mild and gentle. He died first of May. The actual cause of death was paemia, the absorption of the matter in the system instead of its discharge. Like as far as I saw, had everything requisite in surgical treatment, nursing, etc. He had watched as much of the time. He was so good and well-behaved and affectionate, I myself liked him very much. I was in the habit of coming in afternoons and sitting by him and soothing him, and he liked to have me, liked to put his arm out and lay his hand on my knee. Would keep it so a long while. Toward the last he was more restless and flighty at night, often fancying himself with his regiment. By his talk sometimes seemed as if his feelings were hurt by being blamed by his officers for something he was entirely innocent of. Said, I never in my life was thought capable of such a thing, and never was. At other times he would fancy himself talking as seemed to children or such like, his relatives I suppose, and giving them good advice. Would talk to them a long while. All the time he was out of his head not one single bad word or idea escaped him. It was remarked that many a man's conversation in his senses was not half as good as Frank's delirium. He seemed quite willing to die, he had become very weak and had suffered a good deal, and was perfectly resigned, poor boy. I do not know his past life, but I feel as if it must have been good. At any rate what I saw of him here under the most trying circumstances, with a painful wound, and among strangers, I can say that he behaved so brave, so composed, and so sweet and affectionate, it could not be surpassed. And now like many other noble and good men, after serving his country as a soldier, he has yielded up his young life at the very outset in her service. Such things are gloomy, yet there is a text, God doeth all things well, the meaning of which after due time appears to the soul. I thought perhaps a few words, though from a stranger about your son, from one who is with him at the last, might be worthwhile. For I loved the young man, though I but saw him immediately to lose him. I am merely a friend, visiting the hospitals occasionally to cheer the wounded and sick, W.W. The Army's Returning May 7, Sunday Today as I was walking a mile or two south of Alexandria, I fell in with several large squads of the returning Western Army, Sherman's men as they call themselves. About a thousand in all, the largest portion of them half sick, some convalescence, on their way to a hospital camp. These fragmentary excerpts, with the unmistakable Western physiognomy and idioms, crawling along slowly, after a great campaign blown this way as it were out of their latitude, I marked with curiosity and talked with off and on for over an hour. Here and there was one very sick, but all were able to walk except some of the last who had given out, and were seated on the ground faint and despondent. These I tried to cheer, told them the camp they were to reach was only a little way further over the hill, and so got them up and started, accompanying some of the worst a little way in helping them, or putting them under the support of stronger comrades. May 21, saw General Sheridan in his cavalry today, a strong attractive sight. The men were mostly young, a few middle-aged, superb-looking fellows, brown, spare, keen, with well-worn clothing, many with pieces of waterproof cloth around their shoulders, hanging down. They dashed along pretty fast in wide, close ranks, all spattered with mud, no holiday soldiers, brigade after brigade. I could have watched for a week, Sheridan stood on a balcony under a big tree, coolly smoking a cigar. His looks and manner impressed me favorably. May 22, having been taking a walk along Pennsylvania Avenue and Seventh Street North, the city is full of soldiers, running around loose, officers everywhere of all grades, all have the weather-beaten look of practical service. It is a sight I never tire of. All the armies are now here, or portions of them, for tomorrow's review. You see them swarming like bees everywhere. The Grand Review For two days now, the broad spaces of Pennsylvania Avenue along to Treasury Hill, and so by detour around to the President's House, and so up to Georgetown, and across the Aqueduct Bridge, have been alive with a magnificent sight, the returning armies. In their wide ranks stretching clear across the Avenue, I watched them march or ride along at a brisk pace, through two whole days, infantry, cavalry, artillery, some 200,000 men. Some days afterwards, one or two other corps, and then still afterwards, a good part of Sherman's immense army, brought up from Charleston, Savannah, et cetera. Western Soldiers May 26 to 27. The streets, the public buildings, and grounds of Washington still swarm with soldiers from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, and all the western states. I'm continually meeting and talking with them. They often speak to me first, and always show great sociability, and glad to have a good interchange of chat. These Western soldiers are more slow in their movements, and in their intellectual quality also, have no extreme alertness. They are larger in size, have a more serious physiognomy, are continually looking at you as they pass in the street. They are largely animal, and handsomely so. During the war I have been at times with the 14th, 15th, 17th, and 20th Corps. I always feel drawn toward the men, and like their personal contact when we are crowded close together, as frequently these days in the streetcars. They all think the world of General Sherman, call him Old Bill, or sometimes Uncle Billy. A Soldier on Lincoln. May 28. As I sat by the bedside of a sick Michigan soldier in hospital today, a convalescent from the adjoining bed rose and came to me, and presently we began talking. He was a middle-aged man, belonged to the Second Virginia Regiment, but lived in Racine, Ohio, and had a family there. He spoke of President Lincoln and said, the war is over and many are lost. And now we have lost the best, the fairest, the truest man in America. Take him all together. He was the best man this country ever produced. It was quite a while I thought very different, but sometime before the murder, that's the way I have seen it. There was deep earnestness in the soldier. I found upon further talk he had known Mr. Lincoln personally, and quite closely, years before. He was a veteran, was now in the fifth year of his service, was a cavalryman, and had been in a good deal of hard fighting. Two brothers, one south, one north. May 28-29. I stayed tonight a long time by the bedside of a new patient, a young Baltimorean, aged about 19 years, WSP, Second Maryland, Southern. Very feeble, right leg amputated, can't sleep hardly at all. Has taken a great deal of morphine, which as usual is costing more than it comes to. Evidently very intelligent and well-bred, very affectionate, held onto my hand and put it by his face, not willing to let me leave. As I was lingering, soothing him in his pain, he says to me suddenly, I hardly think you know who I am. I do not wish to impose upon you. I am a rebel soldier. I said I did not know that, but it made no difference. Visiting him daily for about two weeks after that while he lived, death had marked him and he was quite alone. I loved him much, always kissed him and he did me. In an adjoining ward I found his brother, an officer of rank, a union soldier, a brave and religious man, Colonel Clifton K. Prentice, Sixth Maryland infantry, Sixth Corps, wounded in one of the engagements at Petersburg, April 2. Lingard suffered much, died in Brooklyn, August 2065. It was in the same battle both were hit. One was a strong unionist, the other a secess. Both fought on their respective sides, both badly wounded and both brought together here after a separation of four years. Each died for his cause. Some sad cases yet. May 31. James H. Williams, age 21, 3rd Virginia Cavalry, about as marked a case of a strong man brought low by a complication of diseases, laryngitis, fever, debility and diarrhea, as I have ever seen, has superb physique, remains swarthy yet, and flushed and red with fever, is altogether flighty, flesh of his great breast and arms tremulous and pulse pounding away with treble quickness, lies a good deal of the time in a partial sleep, but with low muttering and groans, a sleep in which there is no rest. Powerful as he is and so young, he will not be able to stand many more days of the strain and sapping heat of yesterday and today. Tongue and lips parched. When I ask him how he feels, he is able just to articulate, I feel pretty bad yet, old man, and looks at me with his great bright eyes. Father John Williams, Millinsport, Ohio, June 9-10. I have been sitting late tonight by the bedside of a wounded captain, a special friend of mine, lying with a painful fracture of left leg in one of the hospitals, in a large ward partially vacant. I stood out, all but a little candle far from where I sat. The full moon shone in through the windows, making long, slanting, silvery patches on the floor. All was still, my friend too was silent, but could not sleep, so I sat there by him, slowly wafting the fan and occupied with the musings that arose out of the scene. The long shadowy ward, the beautiful ghostly moonlight on the floor, the white beds, here and there in occupant with huddled form, are known off. The hospitals have a number of cases of sunstroke and exhaustion by heat from the late reviews. There are many such from the sixth core, from the hot parade of day before yesterday. Some of these show cost the lives of scores of men. Sunday, September 10. Visited Douglas and Stanton hospitals. They are quite full. Many of the cases are bad ones, lingering wounds and old sickness. There is a more than usual look of despair on the countness as of many of the men, hope has left them. I went through the wards talking as usual. There are several here from the confederate army whom I had seen in other hospitals and they recognized me. Two were in a dying condition. Calhoun's Real Monument. In one of the hospital tents for special cases, as I sat today attending a new amputation, I heard a couple of neighboring soldiers talking to each other from their cots. One down with fever, but improving, had come up belated from Charleston not long before. The other was what we now call an old veteran, i.e. he was a Connecticut youth, probably of less than the age of 25 years. The four last of which he had spent an active service in the war in all parts of the country. The two were chatting of one thing and another. The fever soldier spoke of John C. Calhoun's Monument, which he had seen and was describing it. The veteran said, I have seen Calhoun's Monument. That you saw is not the Real Monument, but I have seen it. It is the desolated ruined south. Nearly the whole generation of young men between 17 and 30 destroyed or maimed. All the old families used up, the rich impoverished, the plantations covered with weeds, the slaves unloosed and become the masters, and the name of Southern are blackened with every shame. All that is Calhoun's Real Monument. Hospitals closing. October 3. There are two army hospitals now remaining. I went to the largest of these, Douglas, and spent the afternoon and evening. There are many sad cases, old wounds, incurable sickness, and some of the wounded from the March and April battles before Richmond. Few realize how sharp and bloody those closing battles were. Our men exposed themselves more than usual, pressed ahead without urging. Then the Southerners fought with extra desperation. Both sides knew that with the successful chasing of the rebel Cabell from Richmond and the occupation of that city by the national troops, the game was up. The dead and wounded were unusually many. Of the wounded, the last lingering driblets have been brought to hospital here. I find many rebel wounded here, and have been extra busy today tending to the worst cases of them with the rest. October, November and December 65. Sundays. Every Sunday of these months visited Harewood Hospital out in the woods, poisoned and recluse, some two and a half or three miles north of the Capitol. The situation is healthy with broken ground, grassy slopes and patches of oak woods, the trees large and fine. It is one of the most extensive of the hospitals now reduced to four or five partially occupied wards, the numerous others being vacant. In November this became the last military hospital kept up by the government, all the others being closed. Cases of the worst and most incurable wounds, an illness and of four fellows who have no homes to go to are found here. December 10, Sunday. Again spending a good part of the day at Harewood, I write this about an hour before sundown. I have walked out for a few minutes to the edge of the woods to soothe myself with the hour and scene. It is a glorious warm golden sunny still afternoon. The only noise is from a crowd of cawing crows on some trees three hundred yards distant. Clusters of gnats swimming and dancing in the air in all directions. The oak leaves are thick under the bare trees and give a strong and delicious perfume. Inside the wards everything is gloomy. Death is there. As I entered I was confronted by it the first thing. A corpse of a poor soldier just dead of typhoid fever. The attendance had just straightened the limbs, put coppers on the eyes and were laying it out. The roads. A great recreation the past three years has been in taking long walks out from Washington 5, 7, perhaps 10 miles and back. Generally with my friend Peter Doyle who is as fond of it as I am. Fine moonlight nights over the perfect military roads, hard and smooth, or Sundays we had these delightful walks never to be forgotten. The roads connecting Washington and the numerous forts around the city made one useful result at any rate out of the war. Typical soldiers. Even the typical soldiers I have been personally intimate with. It seems to me if I were to make a list of them it would be like a city directory. Some few only have I mentioned in the foregoing pages. Most are dead. A few yet living. There is Ruben Farwell of Michigan Little Mitch. Benton H. Wilson, Color Bearer 185th, New York. William Stansbury Manville Winterstein, Ohio Bethwell Smith Captain Sims of 51st, New York killed at Petersburg Mine Explosion. Captain Sam Pooley and Lieutenant Fred McCready same regiment. Also same regiment, my brother George W. Whitman inactive service all through four years reenlisting twice was promoted step by step several times immediately after battles. Lieutenant Captain Major and Lieutenant Colonel was in the actions at Roanoke Newburn, 2nd Bull Run Chantilly, South Mountain Antietam, Fredericksburg Vicksburg, Jackson the bloody conflicts of the wilderness and at Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor and afterwards around Petersburg. At one of these ladder was taken prisoner in past four or five months in sessh military prisons narrowly escaping with life from a severe fever from starvation and half nakedness in the winter. What a history that 51st, New York had. Went out early, marched, fought everywhere, was in storms at sea nearly wrecked, stormed forts tramped hither and yawn in Virginia night and day, summer of 62 afterwards Kentucky, Mississippi reenlisted was in all the engagements and campaigns as above I strengthen and comfort myself much with the certainty that the capacity for just such regiments hundreds, thousands of them is inexhaustible in the United States and that there isn't a country nor a township in the republic nor a street in any city that could turn out and on occasion would turn out lots of just such typical soldiers whenever wanted. Convulsiveness As I have looked over the proof sheets of the preceding pages, I have once or twice feared that my diary would prove at best but a batch of convulsively written reminiscences. Well, be it so. They are but parts of the actual distraction, heat, smoke and excitement of these times. The war itself with the temper of society preceding it can indeed be best described by that very word convulsiveness. Three years summed up During those three years in hospital camp or field I made over 600 visits or tours and went, as I estimate, counting all among from 80,000 to 100,000 of the wounded and sick as sustainer of spirit and body in some degree in time of need. These visits varied from an hour or two to all day or night for with dear or critical cases I generally watched all night. Sometimes I took up my quarters in the hospital and slept or watched there several nights in succession. Those three years I consider the greatest privilege and satisfaction with all their feverish excitements and physical deprivations and lamentable sights and, of course, the most profound lesson of my life. I can say that in my ministerings I comprehended all whoever came in my way northern or southern and slighted none. It aroused and brought out and decided, undreamed of, depths of emotion. It has given me my most fervent views of the true ensemble and extent of the states. While I was with wounded and sick in thousands of cases from the New England states and from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and from Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and all the western states, I was with more or less from all the states north and south without exception. I was with many from the border states, especially from Maryland and Virginia, and found during those lurid years 1862-63 far more Union southerners especially Tennesseans than is supposed. I was with many rebel officers and men among our wounded and gave them always what I had and tried to cheer them the same as any. I was among the army teamsters considerably and indeed always found myself drawn to them. Among the black soldiers wounded contraband camps I also took my way whenever in their neighborhood and did what I could for them. The million dead too summed up. The dead in this war there they lie, screwing the fields and woods and valleys and battlefields of the south. Virginia, the peninsula, Malvern Hill and Faroaks, the banks of the Chickahomony, the terraces of Fredericksburg and Tiedem Bridge, the grittly ravines of Manassas, the bloody commonod of the wilderness. The varieties of the strayed dead the estimate of the war department is 25,000 national soldiers killed in battle and never buried at all 5,000 drowned, 15,000 inhumed by strangers or on the march in haste in hitherto unfound localities 2,000 graves covered by sand and mud by Mississippi freshets 3,000 carried away by caving in of banks etc. Gettysburg, the west southwest, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, the trenches of Petersburg the numberless battles, camps, hospitals everywhere the crop reaped by the mighty reapers, typhoid, dysentery, inflamations and blackest and loathsome of all the dead and living burial pits, the prison pens of Andersonville, Salisbury, Bel Isle etc. Not Dante's pictured hell in all its woes, its degradations, filthy torments excelled those prisons the dead, the dead the dead, our dead or in south and north, ours all all, all, all finally dear to me or east or west, Atlantic coast or Mississippi valley somewhere they crawled to die alone in bushes, low gullies or on the sides of hills there in secluded spots their skeletons, bleached bones, tufts of hair, buttons, fragments of clothing are occasionally found yet our young men once so handsome and so joyous taken from us the son from the mother the husband from the wife the dear friend from the dear friend the clusters of camp graves in Georgia the Carolinas and in Tennessee the single graves left in the woods are by the roadside hundreds, thousands obliterated the corpses floated down the rivers and caught and lodged dozens, scores floated down the upper Potomac after the cavalry engagements the pursuit of Lee following Gettysburg some lie at the bottom of the sea the general million and the special cemeteries in almost all the states the infinite dead, the land and tire saturated, perfumed with their impalpable ashes exhalation in nature's chemistry distilled and shall be so forever in every future grain of wheat and ear of corn and every flower that grows and every breath we draw the northern dead leavening southern soil thousands, I tens of thousands of southerners crumble today in northern earth and everywhere among these countless graves everywhere in the many soldiers cemeteries of the nation there are now I believe over 70 of them as at the time in the vast trenches the depositories of slain northern and southern after the great battles not only were the scathing trail past those years but radiating since in all the peaceful quarters of the land we see and ages yet may see on monuments and gravestones singly or in masses to thousands or tens of thousands the significant word unknown in some of the cemeteries nearly all the dead are unknown at Salisbury North Carolina for instance the known are only 85 while the unknown are 12,027 and 11,700 of these are buried in trenches national monument has been put up here by order of congress to mark the spot but what visible material monument can ever fittingly commemorate that spot the real war will never get in the books and so goodbye to the war I know not how it may have been or may be to others to me the main interest I found and still on recollection find in the rank and file of the armies both sides in those specimens amid the hospitals and even the dead on the field to me the points illustrating the latent personal character and eligibility of these states in the two or three millions of American young and middle aged men north and south embodied in those armies and especially the one third or one fourth of their numbers stricken by wounds or disease at some time in the course of the contest were of more significance even than the political interests involved as so much of a race depends on how it faces death and how it stands personal anguish and sickness as in the glints of emotions under emergencies and the indirect traits and asides in Plutarch we get far profounder clues to the antique world than all its more formal history future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background of countless minor scenes and interiors not the official surface courteousness of the generals not the few great battles of the secession war and in his best they should not the real war will never get in the books in the mushy influences of current times too the fervid atmosphere and typical events of those years are in danger of being totally forgotten I have at night watched by the side of a sick man in the hospital one who could not live many hours I have seen his eyes flash and burn as he raised himself and recurred the faculties on his surrendered brother and mutilations of the corpse afterward see in the preceding pages the incident at Upperville the 17 killed as in the description were left there on the ground after they dropped dead no one touched them all were made sure of however the carcasses were left for the citizens to bury or not as they chose such was the war it was not a quadrille in a ballroom its interior history will not only never be written but its practicality, minutia of deeds and passions will never be even suggested the actual soldier of 1862-65 north and south with all his ways his incredible dauntlessness habits, practices tastes, language his fierce friendship his appetite, rankness his superb strength and animality lawless gait and a hundred unnamed lights will never be written perhaps must not and should not be the preceding notes may furnish a few stray glimpses into that life and into those lurid interiors never to be fully conveyed to the future the hospital part of the drama from 61-65 deserves indeed to be recorded of that many-threaded drama with its sudden and strange surprises its confounding of prophecies its moments of despair the dread of foreign interference the interminable campaigns the bloody battles the mighty encumbrous and green armies the drafts and bounties the immense money expenditure like a heavy pouring constant rain with over the whole land the last three years of the struggle an unending universal morning wail of women, parents, orphans the marrow of the tragedy concentrated in those army hospitals it seemed sometimes as if the whole interest of the land north and south was one vast central hospital and all the rest of the affair but flanges those forming the untold and unwritten history of the war infinitely greater like life than the few scraps and distortions that are ever told or written think how much and of importance will be how much civic and military has already been buried in the grave of eternal darkness end of chapter 7 section 8 of specimen days this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org specimen days by Walt Whitman section 8 an interregnum paragraph several years now elapsed before I resumed my diary I continued at Washington working in the Attorney General's department through 66 and 67 and sometime afterward in February of 73 I was stricken down by paralysis gave up my desk and migrated to Camden, New Jersey where I lived during 74 and 75 quite unwell but after that began to grow better commenced going for weeks at a time even for months down in the country to a charmingly recluse and rural spot along Coutimbre Creek 12 or 13 miles from where it enters the Delaware River domiciled at the farmhouse of my friends the Staffords nearby I lived half the time along this creek and its adjacent fields and lanes and it is to my life here that I perhaps owe partial recovery a sort of second-wind or semi-renewal of the lease of life from the prostration of 1874 through 75 if the notes of that outdoor life could only prove as glowing to you reader-dear as the experience itself was to me doubtless in the course of the following the fact of invalidism will crop out I call myself a half-parallel in these days and reverently bless the Lord it is no worse between some of the lines but I get my share of fun and healthy hours and shall try to indicate them the trick is I find to tone your wants and tastes low down enough and to make much of negatives and of mere daylight and the skies new themes entered upon 1876 and 77 I find the woods in mid-May and early June my best places for composition begin footnote without apology for the abrupt change of field and atmosphere after what I have put in the preceding 50 or 60 pages temporary episodes, thank heaven I restore my book to the bracing and buoyant equilibrium of concrete outdoor nature the only permanent reliance for sanity of book or human life who knows I have it in my fancy my ambition but the pages now ensuing may carry ray of sun or smell of grass or corn or call of bird or gleam of star by night or snowflakes falling fresh and mystic to denizen of heated city house or tired work man or work woman or may be in sick room or prison to serve as cooling breeze or nature's aroma or some fevered mouth or latent pulse end of footnote seated on logs or stumps there or resting on rails near the all the falling memoranda have been jotted down wherever I go, indeed winter or summer city or country alone at home or traveling I must take notes the ruling passion strong and age and disablement and even the approach of I must not say it yet then underneath the following acerpta crossing the T's and dotting the eyes of certain moderate movements of late years I am feigned to fancy the foundations of quite a lesson learned after you have exhausted what there is in business politics, conviviality love and so on have found that none of these finally satisfy or permanently wear what remains nature remains to bring out from their torpid recesses the affinities of a man or woman with the open air the trees, fields, the changes of seasons the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night we will begin from these convictions literature flies so high and is so hotly spiced that our notes may seem hardly more than breaths of common air or drafts of water to drink but that is part of our lesson dear soothing healthy restoration hours after three confining years of paralysis after the long strain of the war and its wounds and death entering a long farm lane as every man has his hobby liking mine is for a real farm lane fenced by old chestnut rails gray green with dabs of moss and lichen copious weeds and briars growing in spots athwart the heaps of stray-picked stones at the fence bases irregular paths worn between and horse and cow tracks all characteristic accompaniments marking and senting the neighborhood in their seasons apple tree blossoms in forward April pigs poultry a field of august buck wheat and in another the long flapping tassels of maize and so to the pond the expansion of the creek the secluded beautiful with young and old trees and such recesses and vistas to the spring and brook so still sauntering on to the spring under the willows musical as soft clinking glasses pour in a sizable stream thick as my neck pure and clear out from its vent where the bank arches over like a great brown shaggy eyebrow or mouth-roof gurgling gurgling ceaselessly meaning saying something, of course if one could only translate it always gurgling there the whole year through never giving out oceans of mint blackberries in summer choice of light and shade just the place for my July sun baths and water baths too but mainly the inimitable soft sound gurgles of it as I sit there hot afternoons how they and all grow into me day after day everything and keeping the wild just palatable perfume and the dappled leaf shadows and all the natural medicinal elemental moral influences of the spot babelano brook with that utterance of thine I too will express what I have gathered in my days and progress native subterranean past and now thee spin and wind thy way I with thee a little while at any rate as I haunt thee so often season by season thou knowest wreckest not me yet why be so certain who can tell but thy will learn from thee and dwell on thee away from thee an early summer revely away then to loosen to unstring the divine bow so tense so long away from curtain carpet sofa book from society from city house street and modern improvements and luxuries away to the primitive winding aforementioned wooded creek with its untrimmed bushes and turfy banks away from ligatures boots buttons and the whole cast iron civilized life from entourage of artificial store machine studio office parlor from tayloredom and fashions clothes from any clothes perhaps for the nonts the summer heats advancing there in those watery shaded solitudes away thou soul let me pig thee out singly reader dear and talk in perfect freedom negligently confidentially for one day and night at least returning to the naked source life of us all to the breast of the great silent savage all exceptive mother alas how many of us are so sodden how many have wandered so far away that return is almost impossible but to my jottings take them as they come from the heap without particular selection there is little consecutiveness and dates they run any time within nearly five or six years each was carelessly penciled in the open air at the time and place the printers will learn this to some vexation perhaps as much of their copy is from those hastily written first notes birds migrating at midnight did you ever chance to hear the midnight flight of birds passing through the air and darkness overhead in countless armies changing their late summer habitat it is something not to be forgotten a friend called me up just after twelve last night to mark the peculiar noise of unusually immense flocks migrating north rather late this year in the silence shadow and delicious odor of the hour the natural perfume belonging to the night alone I thought it rare music you could hear the characteristic motion once or twice the rush of mighty wings but often a velvety rustle long drawn out sometimes quite near with continual calls and chirps and some song notes it all lasted from twelve to after three once in a while the species was plainly distinguishable I could make out the boolink, tangier, wilson's thrush white crowned sparrow and occasionally from high in the air came the notes of the plover bumblebees may month month of swarming singing mating birds the bumblebee month month of the flowering lilacs and then my own birth month as I jot this paragraph I am out just after sunrise and down towards the creek the lights, perfumes, melodies the blue birds, grass birds and robins in every direction the noisy, vocal natural concert for undertones a neighboring woodpecker tapping at his tree and the distant clarion of shanta clear then the fresh earth smells the colors the delicate drabs and thin blues of the perspective the bright green of the grass has received an added tinge from the last two days mildness and moisture how the sun silently mounts on his day's journey how the warm beams bathe all and come streaming kissingly and almost hot on my face a while since the croaking of the pond frogs and the first white of the dogwood blossoms now the golden dandelions an endless perfusion spotting the ground everywhere the white cherry and pear blows the wild violets with their blue eyes looking up and saluting my feet as I saunter the wood edge the rosy blush of the budding apple trees the light clear emerald hue of the wheat fields the darker green of the rye a warm elasticity pervading the air the cedar bushes profusely decked with their little brown apples the summer fully awakening the convocation of black birds garrulous flocks of them gathering on some tree now we're in place noisy as I sit near later nature marches in procession in sections like the core of an army all have done much for me and still do but for the last two days it has been the great wild bee the humble bee or bumble as the children call him as I walk or hobble from the farmhouse down to the creek I traverse the before mentioned lane fenced by old rails with many splits, splinters, breaks, holes, etc. the choice habitat of those crooning, hairy insects up and down and by and between these rails they swarm and dart and fly in countless myriads as I wind slowly along I am often accompanied with a moving cloud of them they play a leading part in my morning midday or sunset rambles and often dominate the landscape in a way I never before thought of fill the long lane hundreds only but by thousands large and vivacious and swift with wonderful momentum and a loud swelling perpetual hum varied now and then by something almost like a shriek they dart to and fro in rapid flashes chasing each other and little things as they are conveying to me a new and pronounced sense of strength, beauty, vitality and movement are they in their mating season or what is the meaning of this plentitude, swiftness, eagerness display as I walked I thought I was followed by a particular swarm but upon observation I saw that it was a rapid succession of changing swarms one after another as I write I am seated under a big, wild cherry tree the warm day tempered by partial clouds and a fresh breeze neither too heavy nor too light and here I sit long and long enveloped in the deep musical drone of these bees flitting, balancing, darting to and fro about me by hundreds big fellows with light yellow jackets great glistening swelling bodies stumpy heads and gauzy wings humming their perpetual rich mellow boom is there not a hint in it for a musical composition of which it should be the background some will be symphony how it all nourishes, lulls me in the way most needed the open air, the rye fields the apple orchards the last two days have been faultless in sun, breeze, temperature and everything never two more perfect days and I have enjoyed them wonderfully my health is somewhat better and my spirit at peace yet the anniversary of the saddest loss and sorrow of my life is close at hand another jotting another perfect day forenoon from seven to nine two hours enveloped in sound of bumblebees and bird music down in the apple trees and in a neighboring cedar were three or four russet back thrushes each singing his best and rollading in ways I'd never heard surpassed two hours I abandoned myself to hearing them and silently absorbing the scene almost every bird I notice has a special time in the year sometimes limited to a few days when it sings its best and now is the period of these russet backs meanwhile up and down the lane the darting droning musical bumblebees a great swarm again for my entourage as I return home moving along with me as before as I write this two or three weeks later I am sitting near the brook under a tulip tree seventy feet high thick with the fresh verger of its young maturity a beautiful object every branch every leaf perfect from top to bottom seeking the sweet juice in the blossoms its swarms with myriads of these wild bees whose loud and steady humming makes an undertone to the hole and to my mood and the hour all of which I will bring to a close by extracting the following verses from Henry A. Beer's little volume as I lay yonder in tall grass a drunken bumblebee went past delirious with honey taughty the golden sash about its body scarce kept it in his swollen belly distant with honey suckled jelly rose liquor and the sweet pee wine had filled his soul with song divine deep had he drunk the warm night through his hairy thighs were wet with dew fulminian antique he had played while the world went round through sleep and shade oft had he lit with thirsty lip some flower cups nectar'd sweets to sip when on smooth petals he would slip or over tangled stamens trip and had long in the pollen rolled crawl out quite dusted or with gold or else his heavy feet would stumble against some bud and down he'd tumble amongst the grass their lie and grumble in low soft base poor modlin bumble cedar apples as I journeyed today in a light wagon ten or twelve miles through the country nothing pleased me more in their homely beauty and novelty I had either never seen the little things to such advantage or had never noticed them before then that peculiar fruit with its profuse clear yellow dangles of an inch long silk or yarn in boundless profusion spotting the dark green cedar bushes contrasting well with their bronze tufts the flossy shreds covering the knobs all over like a shock of wild hair on often pates on my ramble afterwards down by the creek I plucked one from its bush and shall keep it these cedar apples last only a little while however and soon crumble and fade summer sights and indolences June 10th as I write 5.30 p.m. here by the creek nothing can exceed the quiet splendor and freshness around me we had a heavy shower with brief thunder and lightning in the middle of the day and since overhead one of those not uncommon yet indescribable skies and quality not details reforms of limpid blue with rolling silver-fringed clouds and a pure dazzling sun for underlay trees in fullness of tender foliage liquid reedy long drawn notes of birds by the fretful mewing of a quarrelous cat-bird and the pleasant chipper-inshrikes of two king-fishers I have been watching the latter the last half hour on their regular evening frolic over and in the stream evidently a spree of the liveliest kind they pursue each other whirling and wheeling around with many a jock and downward dip splashing the spray in jets of diamonds and then off they swoop on a beautiful flight sometimes so near me I can plainly see their dark grey-feathered bodies and milk-white necks sundown perfume quail notes the hermit thrush June 19th, 4-6.30 p.m sitting alone by the creek solitude here but the scene bright and vivid enough the sun shining and quite a fresh wind blowing some heavy showers last night trees looking their best the clear obscura of different greens shadows, half-shadows in the dappling glimpses of the water through recesses the wild flagellate notes of a quail nearby the just-heard fretting of some hyla's down there in the pond crows cawing in the distance a drove of young hogs rooting in the soft ground near the oak under which I sit some come sniffing near me and then scamper away with grunts and still the clear notes of the quail the quiver of leaf shadows over the paper as I write the sky aloft with white clouds and the sun well declining to the west the swift darting of many sand swallows coming and going their holes in a neighbouring moral bunk the odor of the cedar and oak so palatable as evening approaches perfume, colour, the bronze and gold of nearly ripened wheat clover fields with honey-scent and the well-up maze with long and rustling leaves the great patches of thriving potatoes dusky green flecked all over with white blossoms the old warty venerable oak above me and ever mixed with the dual notes of the quail the suffing of the wind through some nearby pines as I rise for return I linger along to a delicious song epilogue is it the hermit thrush from some bushy recess off there in the swamp repeated leisurely and pensively over and over again this to the circle gambles of the swallows flying by dozens and concentric rings in the last rays of sunset like flashes of some airy wheel a july afternoon by the pond the fervent heat but so much more endurable in this pure air the white and pink pond blossoms with great heart-shaped leaves the glassy waters of the creek the banks with dense brushery and the picturesque beaches and shade and turf the tremulous reedy call of some bird from recesses breaking the warm, indolent, half eluptuous silence an occasional wasp hornet, honey-beer bubble they hover near my hand or face yet annoy me not nor I them as they appear to examine find nothing and away they go the vast space of sky overhead so clear in the buzzard up there sailing his slow whirl and majestic spirals and discs just over the surface of the pond two large slate-colored dragonflies with wings of lace circling and darting and occasionally balancing themselves quite still their wings quivering all the time are they not showing off for my amusement the pond itself with the sword-shaped calamus the water snakes occasionally a flitting blackbird with red dabs on his shoulders as he darts slankingly by the sound that brings out the solitude warms light and shade the quack of some pond-duck the crickets and grasshoppers are mute in the noon heat but I hear the song of the first cicadias then at some distance the rattle and whir of a reaping machine as the horses draw it on a rapid walk through a rye-field on the opposite side of the creek what was that yellower light brown bird large as a young hen with short neck and long stretched legs I just saw in flapping an awkward flight over there through the trees the prevailing delicate yet palpable spicy grassy clovery perfume to my nostrils and overall encircling all to my sight and soul the free space of the sky transparent and blue and hovering there in the west a mass of white-gray, fleecy clouds the sailors call shoals of mackerel the sky with silver swirls like locks of tossed hair spreading, expanding the vast voiceless, formless simulacrum yet may be the most real reality and formulator of everything who knows locusts and katydids August 22 reedy monotones of locust or sounds of katydid I hear the latter at night and the other both day and night I thought the morning and evening warble of the birds delightful but I find I can listen to these strange insects with just as much pleasure a single locust is now heard near noon from a tree two hundred feet off as I write a long whirring continued quite loud noise graded in distinct whirls or swinging circles increasing in strength and rapidity up to a certain point and then a fluttering, quietly tapering fall each strain is continued from one to two minutes the locust song is very appropriate to the scene gushes has meaning is masculine is like some fine old wine not sweet but far better than sweet but the katydid how shall I describe its pecan't utterances one sings from a willow tree just outside my open bedroom window twenty yards distant every clear night for a fortnight past has soothed me to sleep I rode through a piece of woods for a hundred rods the other evening and heard the katydids by myriads very curious for once but I like better my single neighbor on the tree let me say more about the song of the locust even to repetition along chromatic tremulous crescendo like a brass disc whirling round and round emitting wave after wave of notes beginning with a certain moderate beat measure rapidly increasing in speed and emphasis reaching a point of great energy and significance and then quickly and gracefully dropping down and out not the melody of the singing bird far from it the common musician might think without a melody but surely having to the finer ear a harmony of its own monotonous but what a swing there is in that brassy drone round and round the line or like the worrying of brass quites the lesson of a tree September 1st I should not take either the biggest or the most picturesque tree to illustrate it here is one of my favorites now before me a fine yellow poplar quite straight perhaps 90 feet high and four thick at the butt how strong vital enduring how dumbly eloquent what suggestions of imperturbability and being as against the human trait of mere seeming then the qualities almost emotional palpably artistic heroic of a tree so innocent and harmless yet so savage it is yet says nothing how it rebukes by its tough and equitable serenity all weathers this gusty tempered little with it man that runs indoors at might of rain or snow science or rather halfway science scoffs at reminiscence of dryad and hemidryad and of trees speaking but if they don't they do as well as most speaking writing poetry sermons or rather they do a great deal better I should say indeed that these old dryad reminiscences are quite as true as any and profounder than most reminiscences we get cut this out as the quack mediciners say and keep by you go and sit in a grove or wood with one or more of these voiceless companions and read the foregoing and think one lesson from affiliating a tree perhaps the greatest moral lesson anyhow from earth rocks animals is that same lesson of inheritancy of what is without the least regard to what the looker on the critic supposes or says or whether he likes or dislikes what worse what more general malady pervades each and all of us our literature education attitude towards each other even toward ourselves then a morbid trouble about seems generally temporarily seems too and no trouble at all hardly any about the same slow growing perennial real parts of character books friendship marriage humanities invisible foundations and hold together as the all basis the nerve the great sympathetic the plenum within humanity giving stamp to everything is necessarily invisible august fourth six p.m lights and shades and rare effects on tree foliage and grass transparent greens grays all in sunset and dazzle the clear beams are now thrown in many new places on the quilted seemed bronze drab lower tree trunks shadowed except at this hour now flooding their young and old columnar ruggedness with strong light unfolding to my senses new amazing features of silent shaggy charm the solid bark the expression of harmless impassiveness with many a bulge and unrecked before in the revealing of such light such exceptional our such mood one does not wonder at the old story fables indeed why fables of people falling into love sickness with trees seized ecstatic with the mystic realism of the resistless silent strength in them strength which after all is perhaps the last completest highest beauty trees I am familiar with here oaks many kinds one sturdy old fellow vital green bushy five feet thick at the but I sit under every day cedars plenty tulip trees lyrio dendron is of the magnolia family I have seen it in michigan and southern Illinois a hundred forty feet high and eight feet thick at the but does not transplant well best raised from seeds the lumberman call it yellow popular sycamores gum trees both sweet and sour beaches black walnuts sassafras willows katalpas persimmons mountain ash hickories apples many kinds locusts birches dogwood pine the elm chestnut linden aspen spruce hornbeam laurel holly autumn side bits september twenty under an old black oak glossy and green alpine aroma amid a grove the albic druids might have chosen enveloped in the warmth and light of the noonday sun and swarms of flitting insects begin footnote there is a tulip popular within the site of woodstown which is twenty feet around three feet from the ground four feet across about eighteen feet up the trunk which is broken off about three feet over up on the south side an arm has shot out from which rise two stems each about ninety one or ninety two feet from the ground twenty five or more years since the cavity in the butt was large enough for and nine men at one time eight dinner therein it is supposed twelve to fifteen men could now at one time stand within its trunk the severe winds of eighteen hundred and seventy seven seventy eight did not seem to damage it and the two stems send out yearly many blossoms syncing the air immediately about it with their sweet perfume it is entirely unprotected by other trees on a hill woodstown new jersey register April fifteen seventy nine end of footnote with the harsh culling of many crows a hundred rods away here I sit in solitude absorbing enjoying all the corn stacked in its cone shaped stacks russet colored in sear a large field spotted thick with scarlet gold pumpkins and adjoining one of cabbages showing well in their green and pearl modeled by much light and shade melon patches with their bulging ovals and great silver streaked ruffled and broad edged leaves and many an autumn sight and sound beside the distant scream of a flock of guinea hens and poured over all the September breeze with pensive cadence through the treetops another day the ground in all directions strewed with debris from a storm timber creek as I slowly pays its banks has ebbed low and shows reaction from the turbulence well of the late equinox as I look around I take account of stock weeds and shrubs nolls paths occasional stumps some with smooth tops several I use as seats of rest from place to place and from one I am now jotting these lines frequent wildflowers little white star shaped things or the cardinal red of the Lobelia or the cherry ball seeds of the perennial rose or the many threaded vines winding up and around trunks of trees October 1st, 2nd and 3rd down every day in the solitude of the creek a serene autumn sun and westerly breeze today the 3rd as I sit here the water surface prettily moving in wind ripples before me on a stout old beach at the edge decayed and slanting almost fallen to the stream yet with life and leaves in its mossy limbs a gray squirrel exploring runs up and down flirts his tail leaps to the ground sits on his haunches upright as he sees me a Darwinian hint and then races up the tree again October 4th cloudy and coolish signs of insipid winter yet pleasant here the leaves thick falling the ground brown with them already rich coloring yellows of all hues pale and dark green shades from lightest to richest red all set in and toned down by the prevailing brown of the earth and gray of the sky so winter is coming and I yet in my sickness I sit here amid all these fair sights and vital influences and abandon myself to that thought with its wandering trains of speculation the sky days and nights happiness October 20th a clear crispy day dry and breezy air full of oxygen out of the same silent beautyous miracles that envelop and fuse me trees, water, grass, sunlight frost the one I am looking at most today is the sky it has that delicate transparent blue, peculiar to autumn and the only clouds are little or larger white ones giving their still and spiritual motion to the great concave all through the earlier day say from 7 to 11 it keeps a pure yet vivid blue but as noon approaches the color is lighter quite gray for two or three hours then still paler for a spell till sundown which last I watched dazzling through the interstices of a knoll of big trees darts of fire and a gorgeous show of light yellow liver color and red with a vast silver glaze a scant on the water the transparent shadows, shafts sparkle and vivid colors beyond all the paintings ever made I don't know what or how but it seems to me mostly owing to these skies every now and then I think all I have of course seen them every day of my life I never really saw the skies before have had this autumn some wondrously contented hours may I not say perfectly happy ones as I have read Byron just before his death told a friend he had known but three happy hours during his whole existence then there is the old German legend of the king's bell to the same point while I was out there by the wood that beautiful sun sat through the trees I thought of Byron's and the bell story and the notion started in me that I was having a happy hour though perhaps my best moments I never jot down when they come I cannot afford to break the charm by indicting memoranda I just abandoned myself to the mood and to let it float on carrying me in its placid ecstasy what is happiness anyhow is this one of its hours or the like of it so impalpable a mere breath and evanescent tinge I am not sure so let me give myself the benefit of the doubt hast thou, pelucid, in thy azure depth medicine for case like mine ah, the physical shatter and troubled spirit of me the last three years and thus thou subtly mystically now drip it through the air invisibly upon me night of October 28 the heavens unusually transparent the stars out by Mary Edds the great path of the Milky Way with its branches only seen of very clear nights Jupiter setting in the west looks like a huge haphazard splash and has a little star for companion clothed in his white garments into the round and clear arena slowly entered the Brahmin holding a little child by the hand like the moon with the planet Jupiter in a cloudless night sky old Hindu poem early in November at its farther end the lane already described opens into a broad grassy upland field of over twenty acres slightly sloping to the south here I am accustomed to walk for sky views and effects either morning or sundown today from this field my soul has calmed and expanded beyond description the whole forenoon by the clear blue arching all over cloudless nothing particular only sky and daylight their soothing accompaniments autumn leaves the cool dry air the faint aroma crows kind in the distance two great buzzards wheeling gracefully and slowly far up there the occasional murmur of the wind sometimes quite gently then threatening through the trees a gang of farm laborers loading corn stocks in a field in sight and the patient horses waiting colors a contrast such a play of colors and lights different seasons different hours of the day the lines of the far horizon where the faint tinged edge of the landscape loses itself in the sky as I slowly hobble up the lane towards day close an incomparable sunset shooting in molten sapphire and gold shaft after shaft through the ranks of the long leaved corn between me and the west another day the rich dark green of the tulip trees in the oaks the gray of the swamp willows the dull hues of the sycamores and black walnuts the emerald of the cedars after rain and the light yellow of the beaches end of section 8