 Beer by S. G. Young, from The Galaxy, Vol. 23, No. 1, January 2, June 1877. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, reading by Bologna Times. Beer by S. G. Young, British and American Periodical Articles, 1852-1905, by Various. Poets, in every age since the time of Anachron, have sung odes in praise of wine. The greatest bards of every climb have sought inspiration in its sparkling depths. But the poet, even German, is yet unborn, who, moved by sweet memories of the nectar of his fatherland, shall chant and rhyme the virtues of his national drink. Yet, though its merit has inspired neither of the sister-graces, poetry and song, to strike the liar in its honor, it has had, nonetheless, an important mission to perform. To its plebeian sister, Beer, as a healthful beverage, wine must yield the palm. As a common drink, suited to human nature's daily need, it has never been surpassed. If it has nerved no hand to deeds of daring, or struck the scintillating sparks of genius from the human brain, it has added immensely to the health, long life, and happiness of many nations, and is destined to still greater triumphs, as life becomes studied more from a hygienic standpoint. Beer is believed to have been invented by the Egyptians, and is of almost universal use. The zone of the cereals being more extended than that of the grape. Greek writers, before Christ, mentioned a drink composed of barley, under the name of zeithus. This beverage was not unknown to the Romans, and we find it first mentioned by the historian Tacitus. By the nations of the West it was regarded as a nourishing drink for poor people. They prepared it from honey and wheat. Among the ancient Germans and Scandinavians, however, beer was in former times the national beverage, and was prepared from barley, wheat, or oats, with the addition of oak bark, and later, of hops. The ancients put bitter herbs in beer, and the present use of hops is in imitation. Modern beer was born at the time of Charlemagne, an epoch at which hops were first cultivated. The earliest writing in which one finds mention of hops as an aroma to beer is in a parchment of St. Hildegard, abyss of the convent of St. Rupert, at Bingen, on the Rhine. The art of fabricating beer remained for a long time a privilege of convents. The priest's rank, Peter's beer, while the lighter or convent beer, was used by the Laity. Although beer has been manufactured of all the cereals, barley only can be called its true and legitimate father. Bavaria and Franconia were already in the 14th century celebrated for their excellent beer, and the German cities, of which each one soon had its own brewery, vied with their predecessors in the 15th and 16th centuries, the upper and lower Saxony breweries became well known. The Braunschweiger, Einbecker, Göttinger, Brammer and Hamburger beer, as well as the breweries of the cities of Wörsen, Zwicka, Torgel, Merzburg and Gossler, were far and wide celebrated. Bavarian beer has long made the tour of the world. Bach beer from Bavaria and from the Erzberg is exported to Java and China. German Lager beer, as a healthy and lightly stimulating beverage, is welcome in both hot and cold countries, and it is liked as well by the Russians and Scandinavians as by the inhabitants of the tropics. It is brewed by Germans in all parts of the globe, in Valencians, Antwerp, Madrid, Constantinople and even Australia, Chile and Brazil. The English commenced later than the Germans to make beer. In 1524, however, they not only brewed beer, but used hops in its fabrication. The Greek and Latin races, which drank wine, had but little taste for beer, which divided them from the Germanic races as a sharp boundary. Beer and wine seem to have had an influence in forming the temperament of these widely differing races. While wine excites the nervous system, beer tranquilizes and calms it. The action of a particular kind of daily drink used for centuries must, in this respect, have been more or less potent. Hence, perhaps, the Tuton's phlem and the Gaul's excitability. There may be said to be three principal types of beer, the Bavarian, Belgian and English. The Bavarian is obtained by the infusion or decoction of sprouted barley, then by the fermentation of deposit in tubs painted internally with resin. The varieties most appreciated are the Bach and Salvatore beers. The beers of Belgium have the special character of being prepared by spontaneous fermentation, and the process is therefore slow. The principal varieties are the Lambic, the Pharaoh, the March beer, and the Uzzid. In the English beer, the must is prepared by simple infusion, and the fermentation is superficial. On account of its great alcoholic richness, it is easily conserved. The ale, the porter, and the stout are the chief varieties of English beer, which differ among themselves only by the diverse proportion of their ingredients and the different degrees of torrefaction of the barley, rendering it more or less brown. In France, only the superficial method of fermentation is employed. In a liter of Strasbourg beer, one finds five one-fourth grams of albumin, 45 grams of alcohol, and .091 of salts. The ordinary Bavarian beer contains 3% of alcohol and 6.5% of nourishing extracts. The beer the most sticky to the touch are the heaviest in volume and the most nutritious. It is historical that in very olden days the Munich city fathers tried the goodness of the beer by pouring it out on a bench and then sitting down in their leather and expressibles and approved of it only when they remained glued to the seat. In Nuremberg, there is a school of brewers where one may learn all the mysteries of beer brewing. Certain breweries, however, pretend to possess secrets pertaining to the art known exclusively to them. For example, one family near Leipzig is said to have possessed for a century the secret which chemistry has tried in vain to discover of making the famous ghost beer. Good beer, says Dr. Paolo Mantegassa, a celebrated Italian writer on medicine, is certainly one of the most healthy of alcoholic drinks. The bitter tonic, the richness of the elementary principle which it contains and its digestibility make it a real liquid food which, for many temperaments, is medicine. The English beer, which is stronger in spirit than some wines, never produces on the stomach that union of irritating phenomena, vulgarly called heat. And for this reason beer is often tolerated by the most weak and irritable persons and can be drunk with advantage in grave diseases. Laverne, a French physician, counsels it for consumptives and for nervous then people in the most diverse climates. In the intoxication by beer there is always more or less stupidity. Beer is by no means favorable to lespri. It is doubtful if it has ever inspired the great poets or the profound thinkers who make Germany, in science, the leading country in Europe. Reich, Wojt and many great writers have launched their anathemas against it. As a stimulant, beer is less potent than wine or tea and coffee. The forces of soldiers have never been sustained on a fatiguing march, nor can they be incited to a battle by plentiful libations of beer. During the late French Prussian War, nearly every provisioned train which left Bavaria carried supplies of beer to the Bavarian troops. It was found very favorable for the convalescent soldiers in the hospitals, but inferior to coffee or wine as a stimulant on the eve of battle. The old chroniclers of Bavaria relate this curious tale of the origin of the celebrated Bach beer. There was one day in olden times at the table of Duke of Bavaria as guest, a Brunswick nobleman. Now there had long prevailed at the court the custom of presenting to noble guests after the meal a beaker of the Bavarian barley juice, not without a warning as to its strength. The Brunswicker received the usual cup, emptied it at a drop, and pronounced it excellent. But he continued such barley juice as weaned brew at home in Brunswick is equaled by no other. Our mum is the king of beers, so that the bravest drinker cannot take two beakers of it without sinking under the table. The Duke listened with displeasure to the haughty words of the night, for he was not a little proud of the brewings of his country, and commanded his cup-bearer with a meaning look to challenge him. By your leave, Sir Knight replied the page, What you say is not quite true. If it pleases you, and my Lord Duke, I should like to lay a wager with you. The Duke nodded ascent, and the Knight, smiling scornfully, challenged the cup-bearer to pledge him. Your Brunswick mum, continued the page, may pass as a refreshing drink, but with our beer you cannot compare it, for the best of our brewings is unknown to you. In case, however, you please again to make your appearance at the hospitable court of my gracious Lord, I will promise you a beaker of beer which cannot be equaled in any other country of united Christendom. I will drink the greatest bumper that can be found in our court and your mum at one draught if you can take of our beer even slowly three beakers. He, who a half hour afterward can stand on one leg and thread a needle, shall win the wager, and receive from the other a mighty cask of Tocher, Rebentsof. This speech received loud applause, and the Brunswicker, laughingly, accepted the challenge. After the night had departed the Duke tapped the page on the shoulder and said, Take care that thou dost not repent thy word, and that the Brunswicker does not win the wager. The first morning in May the Brunswicker rode into the castle and was welcomed by the Duke. All eyes were turned on the cup-bearer, who shortly afterward appeared with a suite of pages carrying on a beer two little casks, one bearing the Bavarian arms and the other those of Brunswick. The right to give to the contents of the former a particular name was reserved to the Duke. The page produced likewise a monstrous silver bumper and three beakers of the ordinary size. It was long before the bumper was filled to the rim, and then it required two men to raise it to the table. In the meantime another page placed the three beakers before the night, who could not suppress a sarcastic laugh at the huge bumper which the page, taking in his strong arms, placed to his lips. As the night emptied the last beaker, the cup-bearer turned down the bumper. Two needles and a bundle of silk lay on the table. It wanted a few moments of the half hour, and the Brunswicker ran toward the garden for fresh air. Hardly arrived in the court a peculiar swimming of the head seized him so that he fell to the ground. A servant saw him from the window and hastened out, followed by the court with the Duke in advance. There lay the Brunswicker and tried, in vain, to rise. By all the saints had written, What has thrown you in the sand? inquired the Duke sympathetically. The buck, the buck! The goat, the goat, murmured the night with a heavy tongue. A burst of sarcastic laughter echoed in the courtyard. In the meantime the page stood on one foot, and without swaying, threaded the needle. The buck, the buck! repeated the Duke smiling. Our beer is no longer without a name. It shall be called buck, that one may take care. The buck season lasts about six weeks from May into June, just before it commences a transparency of a goat, drinking from a tall, slender glass is placed as a sign before certain beer locals, called in Munich dialect, Boxstalls, not because goats are kept there, but because wonderful beer, called Bock, is dispensed. He who has not lived in Bavaria can have no idea of what importance beer is in Bavarian life. There are in Munich Germans who exist only for beer, and there have been pointed out to me old gentlemen who have frequented daily the same local for twenty-five or thirty years, and even occupied the same seat and pounded the same table by way of enforcing their views in discussing the politics of the day. They are called Stumpgast, literally stock guests, and are much honored in their respective locals. The greatest personages do not disdain the meanest locals, provided the beer is good and to their taste. Naked pine tables do not disgust them, nor the hardest benches. Often on the table skins of radishes, crusts of bread, cigar stumps, tobacco ashes, herring heads, and cheese rinds form a fragrant melange. The inheritors of this precious legacy push it away without undue irritability. Radishes are carried about by old women called radivibers, who do a thriving business besides in nuts and herrings. One cannot find in any other country of the world radishes of such size, tenderness, and flavor, a brown variety inherited by the happy Muncheners with their breweries. Nowhere else does cutting and salting them rank as an art. To prepare one scientifically, they pair it carefully, slit it in three slices nearly to the end, place salt on the top, and draw the finger over it, as if it were a pack of cards. The salt falls between the slices, and when they are pressed together becomes absorbed. And a German beer and local are represented all classes of society. Beer is the great leveler of social distinctions. The foaming glass of King Gumbrenis unites all Germans of all states, climates, and professions, and a closer brotherhood than the scepter of the Hohenzollens, and links that portion of the totonic race over which the stars and stripes throws its protecting folds to the dear fatherland. Fine wines are a perquisite of money. The fortunate aristocrat and the House of Israel, which everywhere waxes fat on the needs of travelers, may sip their champagne. Their Lacrame Christi and their Hochheimer, while less favored humanity, contents itself with sour vin or dener, but beer is the same for all, and in some breweries each one must search for a glass, rinse it, and present himself in his turn at the shank window to which there is no royal road. La Bière, which a great writer calls Sevin de la Reform, is essentially a democratic drink. It became popular at a time when a fatal blow had been struck at class privileges and priestly exclusiveness. Manfully does a true-hearted Bavarian stand by his brewery in ill as well as good report. If the beer turns out badly, he does not find it a sufficient reason to desert his local, for some other, but rather remains with touching devotion and anticipates the approaching end of the old beer and the advent of new, with implicit trust and confidence in the future. Some years ago the Bavarian Post and Railway conductors distinguished themselves by the mournful zeal with which they notified to the passengers the nearing of the frontier. At each station they were sorrowfully communicative. The last Berescher, but four gentlemen, gentlemen there are only two more real Bereschers, gentlemen, with tears in the voice, the last Berescher. The passengers rushed to the buffet and drink. Even now with that curious affection with which every Bavarian's heart turns to his mecca of beer the salutation to a stranger is Are you going to Munich? Da werden Sie Gott's Bier trinken? You came from Munich? Ach, da haben Sie Gott's Bier getthrücken? Even in Berlin there are different kinds of beer, like the Federal Union, one in many and many in one. Between them are sometimes irreconcilable differences, as for example between the white and Actian's beer of Berlin. The former is made of wheat and is exclusively a summer beverage, and a glass of it is fondly termed as Kleinweiß, a little white one. Perhaps an irony, for it is served in eccentric mammoth tumblers which require both hands to lift. Then there is the Vienna beer, the antipodes of the Bavarian. The latter must be drunk soon after it is made, while the former must lie many months in the cellar before it is ready for use. In Austria, that forcible union of states of clashing interests and nationalities, which is not a nation, but only a government reposing on bayonets. The population is divided between the partisans of King Gembrenus and those of Bacchus, as little as an artist could maintain that he was familiar with the works of the great masters when he had not visited Italy, so little could a beer-drinker assert that he had seen beer rightly drunk when he had not been in Munich. All over the world beer is regarded as a refreshment, but in Munich it is the elixir of life, the fabled fountain of youth and happiness. It is looked upon as nourishment by the lower classes, who drink for dinner two masses of it, with soup and black bread. For the price of the beer they could procure a good portion of meat, but they universally maintain that they are best nourished with beer and bread. The Bavarian drinks to satisfy his thirst, that beautiful German gift of God. If he is healthy, he drinks because it keeps his life juices in their normal state. If he is sick and in pain, because it is a soothing and harmless narcotic. If he is hungry, because beer is nourishment, if he has already eaten, because beer promotes digestion. If he is warm, because it is cooling and refreshing. If he is cold, because it warms him. If he is fatigued, because it is a tonic and sovereign strength, renewer. If he is angry, because beer soothes him and gives him time to consider. If he needs courage, because beer is precisely the right stimulant. Where the Americans fly to their bitters to tone up the system and enliven the secretions, the Germans resort to beer. And many are of opinion that frequent trips to the box stalls in the spring are more healing than a visit to Karlsbad or Baden-Baden, where one drinks disgusting water. In all circumstances and all moods they drink and are comforted. The Jews believed that the sacred waves of the Jordan were powerful to wash away all human suffering, either of the soul or body. Faith was necessary to this pious healing. To the Munkener, beer is the river of health. His faith in it dates from his earliest infancy and he resorts to its beneficial influence at least seven times a day. And drinks his last Krugel with apparently the same relish as the first. The quantity which Germans drink is something incredible. Bavarian students usually take from five to seven masses per day. At the German Jesuit Seminary in Prague the novices are allowed daily seven, the clericos ten, and the priests twelve pints of beer. Beer is considered good not only for men but for women, for girls and boys and even unweaned infants. Mein Krug, the Munkener, speaks of his natural and human rights. He was born with a right to his beer and his Krugel as man is born with a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And equally with these the state must look after this right. The Krugels or beer mugs of each brewery are inspected by the police to see if the measure is correct and if the where has no poisonous lead in its composition. The Royal Cay is stamped on them by the king's authority. The police also examine the contents of the beer with the same zeal as the water or the condition of the sewers. The Germans, as a nation, are patient of wrong and peace-loving but the rumor of attacks on beer raises frightful commotion and a riot is often the consequence as well tax air, water and fire as beer, the fifth element. In an ancient neighborhood of Munich behind the post and best entered from Maximilian Street is a little square remarkable for its ugliness. All the houses are old and one feels upon entering it as if one had suddenly walked back into the Middle Ages. On the east side stands a time-gray, low, irregular building resembling an architecture or by its wants of it, nothing of the present age. This is the Royal Hofbrauri. After 10 a.m. a constant stream of thirsty souls flows along the streets and narrow alleys leading toward its dismal-looking portals. Its beer is celebrated as being the finest in the world and is the standard by which all beers are judged. It is in the poetry of beer. It is to all other broings what Shakespeare is to the drama, what the Colosseum is to other antiquities. None of the beer is exported or sold. It is all drunk on the spot and when it gives out, no other brewery can supply a drop comparable with it. The Parisians, who have heaped every luxury from the poles to the tropics in their capital of the world, have not enough money in the Bank of France to purchase a casque of it. It is said that Maximilian II resolved that the best beer in the world should be made at the Royal Brewery in Munich. It has never been expected that it would yield any revenue but merely pay its expenses. It is now under the protection of the present king and the ingredients are inspected by an officer of the Royal Household. For its dirt, its darkness, its utter want of service, the Hofbrauri is unequaled in the world and nowhere else can be found such a mixed society. Entering the low vaulted room each one looks anxiously about for an empty mug. These are of grey stone containing a mass the price of which is seven and a half cratesers. Spying one, he hastens to secure it from other competitors. The first who reaches it carries it off in triumph to the spring in the anti-room, but presents himself behind a queue of predecessors at the Schenck window where several pairs of hands are occupied all day long in filling mugs from the great casks within. This accomplished he returns to the guest room and searches for a seat. If found it is certainly not luxurious. A wooden bench of pine stained by time and continual use to a dark dirt color on the kitchen table. The walls and ceiling are grim with age and the atmosphere hazy with smoke. The scene baffles description. All classes of society are represented side by side with a noble or learned professor one sees the poorest artisan and a common soldier. Here and there the picturesque face of an artist is in close proximity to a peasant and through the smoky atmosphere one catches the gleam of the scarlet or a sky blue cap of a German student or the glitter of an epaulet. The Catholic of the most ultramontane stamp is there as well as the Jew, the Protestant and the free thinker. Here stands a pilgrim from far America armed with a badiker and there an Englishman with the inevitable Murray under his arm too amazed or disdainful to search for a mass. Remarkable also are the steady obituaries of the place with Albert Durer like features which look as if hastily hewn out of ancient wood with two or three blows of a hatchet or with smoke dried physiognomies having a tent like that of a Mircham pipe acquired by years of exposure to the thick atmosphere of smoky breweries. Morning, noon and night year in and year out some talk over the news of the day but most sit in silence not a few make a meal with bread and radishes or a sausage brought from the nearest pork shop. Immunic a singular and ancient custom prevails if by chance the cover of a mug is left up any individual who chooses may seize it and drink the contents. At the Hofbröhring I once saw a newly arrived Englishman carrying the usual red guidebook quit the room for an instant leaving uncovered his just acquired mass of beer there came along a seedy looking old gentleman evidently a Stammgast a gleam of satisfaction stole over his wooden features as he aspired the open mug pausing a moment he lifted it to his lips and slowly drank the contents setting it down empty with a face mildly radiating satisfaction he went his way presently the owner of the beer returned took his seat and lifted the mass without looking to his lips with intense astonishment he put it down again appeared not to believe the evidence of his senses applied his glass to his eye looked with anxiety into his mug and became satisfied of its emptiness at his neighbors he cast a quick glance of indignant suspicion the look of a Britain whose rights were invaded no one even looked up apparently the occasion was too common to excite attention gradually his face regained its composure he procured a new supply and as the wonderful barley juice disappeared became again calm and happy miraculous mixture who would not under influence forget all rancor and bitterness even though his deadliest enemies sat opposite in the hop and residence Stath Munchen as Munich is always called in official documents many of the breweries bear the names of orders of monks because there the friars in olden days made particularly good beer the breweries borrowed from them the receipt and the name hence the brewery to the Augustiner to the Dominic canner to the Francis canner and the Salvatore New beer is in all cities of America and Europe a simple fact in Munich it is an important public and private family event concerning each house as well as the entire city the opening of the Salvatore brewery in the suburbs of Munich this brief season of a month in the spring assumes for the inhabitants the importance of a long anticipated holiday thither an eager crowd of townspeople make pilgrimage I was present on one of these auspicious occasions and found a joyous multitude of more than 2,000 persons filling to overflowing the capacious building gaily trimmed with evergreens interspersed with the national colors a band discoursed excellent music that necessary element without which no German scene is complete the waiters more than usually adroit in supplying the wants of the crowd carried in their hands 14 glasses at a time with professional dexterity the peculiar delicacy of the occasion aside from the beer seemed to be cheese plentifully sprinkled with black pepper late in the evening the people became more excited and sympathetic and then it was proposed to sing Herr Fischer a popular German song of the people a verse was sung by a few voices as a solo then followed a mighty chorus from all the persons present each one raised the cover of his beer mug at the commencement and let it fall with a clang at the close of the chorus with startling effect one half of the inhabitants appear to be engaged in the fabrication of beer and the entire population in drinking it it impresses one as being the only industry there the enormous brewery wagons drawn by five Norman horses are ever to be seen on the trains going from the city there is ordinarily a beer car painted in festive white it bears in inscription that none may mistake its contents perhaps that the peasants may bless it as it passes it is looked upon with as much reverence as if it bore the arc of the covenant all over Germany among the most ordinary of birthday and holiday presents are the elegantly painted porcelain tops for beer glasses the works of great masters may be found copied in exquisite style for this purpose as well as illustrations suited to uncultivated tastes to these pictures there are appropriate mottos and often a verse adapted to the comprehension of the most uneducated peasant a favorite among the Bavarians judging from the frequency with which it is met with in all parts of Bavaria represents a peasant in a balcony waving her kerchief to her lover departing in a little skiff on an intensely blue sea beneath and patois is the dog roll beautifully blue is the sea but my heart aches in me and my heart will never recover till returns my peasant lover equally a favorite is the following a rifle to shoot and a fighting ring to hit and a maiden to kiss must a lively boy have the rings to which the rhyme refers are of huge size of silver with a sharp edge square of the same metal they are heirlooms among the peasants and are worn on the middle finger it is the custom in a quarrel to hit one's adversary with the stausring on the cheek which it tears open in Germany many of the great breweries have summer gardens and the suburbs of the cities in Berlin there are magnificent beer garden where the two most necessary elements of German existence beer and music are united I need only refer to the Hofgeiger with its flowers, fountains miniature lake and open-air theater where popular comedies are performed three times per week there is an afternoon concert by one or two regiment bands thither the Germans conduct their families in the winter there are concert rooms in the cities where music is married not to a mortal verse but to beer and these classical concerts are patronized by people of high respectability beer is peculiarly suited to the American temperament too nervous and sensitive it is certain that the human race always has and probably always will resort to beverages more or less stimulating the preaching of moralists and the efforts of legislators will not exclude them permanently from our use it is not in the use but in the abuse that the difficulty lies neither tea nor coffee answers for all temperaments and all occasions as nervous elements the extraordinary and increasing diffusion of liquors is one of the social ulcers of modern society particularly in America it is unfortunately true that the use of strong alcoholics is increasing every day to the great detriment of public health and morals taken merely to kill time they often end by killing the individual one of the great advantages of beer too much forgotten even by physicians is that it reverses the influence of alcohol by which it loses its irritating properties on the mucus membrane of the stomach the celebrated Dr. Bach late professor of pathological anatomy in the university at Leipzig says beer exercises on the digestion on the circulation on the nerves and above all on the whole system a beneficial effect it would be well if Americans would adopt it instead of the innumerable harmful beverages which ruin the health and poison the peace of society end of beer by S.G. Young Walt Whitman in Europe by Roman I. Zuboff from the writer volume 6 April 1892 this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Bologna Times British and American periodical articles 1852 to 1905 by Various section 11 with the death and burial of Walt Whitman passes away the most picturesque figure of contemporary literature it is true that in England the name of the poet is more familiar than his poetry and that students of literature are more conversant with the nature of his writings than are the mass of general readers yet the character of the man and the spirit of his compositions were rapidly beginning to be appreciated by and to sway and influence over the whole higher intelligence of the country considering the man and his works it is almost surprising to find how easily he did conquer for himself an audience and even admirers in England he was par excellence a contemporary American not that American who clings to the puritanic traditions of his English ancestors but that characteristic product of the new world who looks more with eagerness to the future than with satisfaction on the past his preeminent optimism is inspired by his ardent appreciation of the living present Walt Whitman stood forth as an innovator into such realms where the rigor of conditions demanded an abstract compliance with rules which were based on absolute truths and where a swerving from them was evidence of impudence his unconventional forms the rhyme-less rhythm of his verses which in appearance resembled more a careless prosody than a delicately attuned posy this alone was enough to provoke at first an incredulous mile even among those whose taste were endowed with more penetration but Walt Whitman stood forth besides as the representative of a principle which, as yet is looked upon with suspicion by the old world of the principle of a broad all-embracing democracy which elevates manhood above all forms all conditions and all limitations the question where meter comes in in poetry whether it is simply a means of accentuating rhythm and is not the rhythm itself and whether it is legitimate to do as Whitman did to prolong the rhythmic phrase at the expense of meter until the sense is completed all this was a problem for professors and the critics to decide and they might wrangle as they pleased but here was Walt Whitman recognizing no beauty higher than creative nature recognizing no law greater than the spontaneous dictates of the moral personality here was Walt Whitman a pagan, a pantheist who recognized more divinity in an outcast human being than in a grandly ordained king who acknowledged nothing higher than the dignity of the human individuality all this was enough to make sober people pause and think if not shudder tis true that some almost all the representative men of literature in England recognized in Walt Whitman from the first a beauty, a grandeur which appealed to and captivated their higher susceptibilities and mental appreciation such critics as George Eliot Dowden and even Matthew Arnold and such poets as Tennyson Swinburne and even William Morris have uttered expressions of the warmest appreciation of his great talent but the class of general readers are not endowed with such discrimination and his works till very recently were excluded from the shells of libraries which were catholic enough to embrace the writings of the earliest saints and the latest productions of Zola on the ground that his poetry was too demoralizing for the general public this is not a general statement I have a specific instance in view when in 1886 I went to the Leinster House in Dublin the public library of the place and asked for Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass on being informed that they had no copy of the library I put down the book in the suggestion list a number of Trinity students did the same the matter was brought before the directors at their monthly meeting and it appears it was strenuously objected to by the librarian who pleaded the exclusion of the book on the ground of its being immoral and decent we carried the fight from private discussion to correspondence and the press and the university review put the pages of the magazine at our disposal and it was not until a year afterwards and until considerable pressure was brought on the directors that Leaves of Grass was admitted into the catalogs of the Dublin library but the genuine merit of Walt Whitman's works as the true inspiration of individualistic genius is always destined to do is rapidly conquering prejudice even of those whose obtuse minds seldom discover the intrinsic good motive frequently underlying an indifferent form those whose objections rusted on their incapacity of penetrating further than the surface of the headline are rapidly beginning to discern in Walt Whitman's writings a force, a sentiment a moral passion and a natural grandeur setting for the occasional roughness or looseness of the expressions he mirrors them in before his death the good old poet had not only the satisfaction of knowing that his writings have been widely read and universally commented on but he had the pleasure of seeing his Leaves of Grass translated into German by T. W. Rolston of Dublin and Professor Schwartz of Dresden of having parts of it translated into French and a few years ago Mr. Lee consulted me as to the advisability of rendering them into Russian parts of the book having already been published in the periodicals of the Russian emigres in Switzerland not only this but his innovations, his genius have even founded a school and has a following the little volume published some time ago in England under the title, Toward Democracy by Ed Carpenter written in the same style as the Leaves of Grass is also gradually finding its way to the surface of the highest consideration and such passages as this when nature is calling to man I, nature, stand and call to you though you heed not have courage come forth O child of mine that you may see me as a nymph of the invisible air before her mortal beloved so I glance before you I dart and stand in your path and turn away from your heedless eyes like one in pain I am the ground I listen to the sound of your feet they come nearer, I shut my eyes and fill their tread over my face et cetera, et cetera or such an outburst as this Ireland, liberty's deathless flame leaping on her Atlantic shore are enough to convince the human mind that men who write them can be actuated only by impulses of which genius alone is capable it is this impulse the sober, solemn love pervading the writings of Walt Whitman which has invested his compositions with a property for transcending in genuine beauty the effusions of those poets whose object in writing is more the display capacity for finished manipulation of delicate form than the manifestation of a preconception of a grand spirit Walt Whitman is spontaneous without being careless his style is unhesitating his diction is flowing smooth without being searching or verbose it seems as if his soul were responsive not plaintively but appreciatively responsive to all the chords influences and objects of nature and that his imagination were absorptive enough to embrace and love and reflect all changes and transitions of light and shadow and nature and life particularly in the inner human life for Walt Whitman's love for humanity permeating all his writings has more grandeur than the most heroic of classic epics End of Walt Whitman in Europe by Roman I. Zuboff When I Knew Stephen Crane by Willa Cather from the Library, June 23, 1900 from a collection of stories, reviews and essays this LibriBox recording is in the public domain, reading by Bologna Times British and American periodical articles 1852-1905 by Various section 12 It was, I think, in the spring of 1994 that a slender, narrow chested fellow in a shabby grey suit with a soft felt hat pulled low over his eyes soldered into the office of the managing editor of the Nebraska State Journal and introduced himself as Stephen Crane He stated that he was going to Mexico to do some work for the bachelor syndicate and get rid of his cough and that he would be stopping in Lincoln for a few days Later he explained that he was out of money and would be compelled to wait until he got a check from the East before he went further I was a junior at the Nebraska State University at the time and was doing some work for the State Journal in my leisure time and I happened to be in the managing editor's room when Mr. Crane introduced himself I was just off the range I knew a little Greek and something about cattle and a good horse when I saw one and beyond horses and cattle I considered nothing of vital importance except good stories and the people who wrote them This was the first man of letters I had ever met in the flesh and when the young man announced who he was I dropped into a chair behind the editor's desk where I could stare at him without being too much in evidence Only a very youthful enthusiasm and a large propensity for hero worship could have found anything impressive in the young man who stood before the managing editor's desk He was thin to emaciation His face was gaunt and unshaven A thin dark moustache straggled on his upper lip His black hair grew low on his forehead and was shaggy and unkempt His bright clothes were much the worse for wear and fitted him so badly it seemed unlikely he had ever been measured for them He wore a flannel shirt and a slovenly bludgy for a necktie and his shoes were dusty and worn grey about the toes and were badly run over at the heel I had seen many a tramp printer come up the journal stairs to hunt a job but never one who presented such a disreputable appearance as the story-maker man He wore gloves which seemed rather a contradiction to the general slovenliness of his attire but when he took them off to search his pockets I noticed that his hands were singularly fine, long, white and delicately shaped with thin, nervous fingers I have seen pictures of Opry Beardsley's hands that recalled Cranes very vividly At that time Cranes was but 24 and almost an unknown man Hamlin Garland had seen some of his work and believed in him and had introduced him to Mr. Howells who recommended him to the bachelor syndicate The red badge of courage had been published in the State Journal that winter along with a lot of other syndicate matter and the grammatical construction of the story was so faulty that the managing editor had several times called on me to edit the copy In this way I had to read it very carefully and through the careless sentence structure I saw the wonder of that remarkable performance but the grammar certainly was bad I remember one of the reporters who had corrected the phrase, it don't for the tenth time, remarked savagely if I couldn't write better English than this, I'd quit Cranes spent several days in the town, living from hand to mouth and waiting for his money I think he borrowed a small amount from the managing editor He lounged about the office most of the time and I frequently encountered him going in and out of the cheap restaurants on 10th Street When he was at the office he talked a good deal in a wandering absent-minded fashion and his conversation was uniformly frivolous If he could not evade a serious question by a joke he bolted I cut my classes to lie and wait for him confident that in some unwary moment I could trap him into serious conversation that if one burned instance long enough and ardently enough the oracle would not be dumb I was maupassant mad at the time and malady, particularly unattractive and a junior and I made a frantic effort to get an expression of opinion from him on le bonheur Oh, you're moping, are you? he remarked with a sarcastic grin and went on reading a little volume of Poe that he carried in his pocket At another time I cornered him in the funny man's room and succeeded in getting a little bit out of him We were taught literature by an exceedingly analytical method at the university and we probably distorted the method and I was busy trying to find the least common multiple of Hamlet and the greatest common divisor of Macbeth and I began asking him whether stories were constructed by Kabbalistic formulae At length he sighed wearily and shook his drooping shoulders and said, you can't do it by rule any more than you can dance by rule you have to have the itch of the thing in your fingers and if you haven't, well, you're damned lucky and you'll live long and prosper that's all and with that he yawned and went down the hall Crane was moody most of the time his health was bad and he seemed profoundly discouraged even his jokes were exceedingly drastic he got with the tense preoccupied self-centered air of a man who was brooding over some impending disaster and I conjectured vainly as to what it might be though he was seemingly entirely idle during the few days I knew him his manner indicated that he was in the throes of work that told terribly on his nerves his eyes I remember as the finest I have ever seen large and dark and full of raging lights but with a profound melancholy always lurking deep in them they were eyes that seemed to be burning themselves out as he sat at the desk with his shoulders drooping forward his head low and his long white fingers drumming on the sheets of copy paper he was as nervous as a racehorse fretting to be on the track always as he came and went about the halls he seemed like a man preparing for a sudden departure now that he is dead it occurs to me that all his life was a preparation for a sudden departure I remember once when he was writing a letter he stopped and asked me about the spelling of a word saying carelessly I haven't time to learn to spell then glancing down at his attire he added with an absent minded smile I haven't time to dress either makes an awful slice out of a fellow's life he said he was poor and he certainly looked it but four years later when he was in Cuba drawing the largest salary ever paid a newspaper correspondent he clung to the same untidy manner of dress and his ragged overalls and buttonless shirt were eyesores to the immaculate Mr. Davis in his spotless linen and neat khaki uniform with his Gibson shin always freshly shaven when I first heard of his serious illness his old throat trouble aggravated into consumption by his reckless exposure in Cuba I recalled a passage from Matterlink's essay the predestined on those doomed to early death quote as children life seems nearer to them than to other children they appear to know nothing and yet there is in their eyes so profound a certainty that we feel they must know all and all haste but wisely and with minute care do they prepare themselves to live and this very haste is a sign upon which mothers can scarce bring themselves to look I remember too the young man's melancholy and his tenseness his burning eyes and his way of slurring over the less important things as one whose time is short I have heard other people say how difficult it was to induce Grand to talk seriously about his work and I suspect that he was particularly averse to discussions with literary men of wider education and better equipment than himself yet he seemed to feel that this fuller culture was not for him perhaps the unreasoning instinct which lies deep in the roots of our lives and which guides us all told him that he has not time enough to acquire it men will sometimes reveal themselves to children or to people whom they think never to see again more completely than they ever do to their confers from the wise we hold back alike our folly and our wisdom and for the recipients of our deeper confidences we seldom select our equals the soul has no message for the friends with whom we dine every week it is a custom and convention and we play only in the shallows it selects its listeners willfully and seemingly delights to waste its best upon the chance wafer who meets us in the highway at a faded hour there are moments too when the tides run high or very low when self-revelation is necessary to every man if it be only to his valet or his gardener at such a moment I was with Crane the hoped for revelation came unexpectedly enough it was on the last night he spent in Lincoln I had come back from the theater and was in the journal office writing a notice of the play it was 11 o'clock when Crane came in he had expected his money to arrive on the night mail and it had not done so and he was out of sorts and deeply despondent he sat down on the ledge of the open window he was raised on the street and when I had finished my notice I went over and took a chair beside him quite without invitation on my part Crane began to talk began to curse his trade from the first throb of creative desire in a boy to the finished work of the master the night was oppressively warm one of those dry winds that are the curse of that country was blowing up from Kansas the white western moonlight through sharp blue shadows below us the streets were silent at that hour and we could hear the gurgle of the fountain in the post office square across the street and the twang of banjos from the lower veranda of the hotel Lincoln where the colored waiters were serenading the guests the droplets in the office were dull under their green shades and the telegraph sounder clicked faintly in the next room all his long tirade Crane never raised his voice he spoke slowly and monotonously and even calmly but I have never known so bitter a heart in any man as he revealed to me that night it was an arraignment of the wages of life an invocation to the ministers of hate incidentally he told me the sum he had received for the red badge of courage which I think was something like ninety dollars he repeated some lines from the black writers which was then in preparation he gave me to understand that he led a double literary life writing in the first place the matter that pleased himself and doing it very slowly in the second place any sort of stuff that would sell and he remarked that his poor was just as bad as it could possibly be he realized he said that his intentions were absolutely impassable what I can't do, I can't do at all and I can't acquire it I only hold one trump he had no settled plans at all he was going to Mexico wholly uncertain of being able to do any successful work there and he seemed to feel very insecure about the financial end of his venture the thing that most interested me was what he said about his slow method of composition he said that there was little money in story writing at best and practically none in it for him because of the time it took him to work up his detail other men, he said, could sit down and write up an experience while the physical effect of it, so to speak was still upon them and yesterday's impressions made today's copy but when he came in from the streets to write up what he had seen there his faculties were benumbed with pencil and hunting for words like a schoolboy I mentioned the red badge of courage which was written in nine days and he replied that though the writing took very little time he had been unconsciously working the detail of the story out through most of his boyhood his ancestors had been soldiers and he had been imagining war stories ever since he was out of knickerbockers and in writing he had simply gone over his imaginary campaigns and selected his favorite imaginary experiences he declared that his imagination was hidebound it was there but it pulled hard after he got a notion for a story months passed before he could get any sort of personal contract with it or feel any potency to handle it the detail of a thing has to filter through my blood and then it comes out like a native product but it takes forever I distinctly remember the illustration for it rather took hold of me I have often been astonished since to hear Crane spoken of as the reporter in fiction for the reportorial faculty of superficial reception and quick transference was what he conspicuously lacked his first newspaper account of his shipwreck on the filibuster of Florida coast was as lifeless as the copy of a police court reporter it was many months afterwards that the literary product of his terrible experience appeared in that marvelous sea story the open boat unsurpassed in its vividness and constructive perfection at the close of our long conversation that night when the copy boy came in to take me home I suggested to Crane that in ten years he would probably laugh at all his temporary discomfort again his body took on that strenuous tension and he clenched his hands saying I can't wait ten years I haven't time the ten years are not up yet and he has done his work and gathered his reward and gone was ever so much experience and achievement crowded into so short a space of time a great man dead at 29 that would have puzzled the world. Edward Garnett wrote of him in the Academy of December 17 1899 I cannot remember a parallel in the literary history of fiction Mapa son Meredith Henry James Mr. Howells and Tolstoy were all learning their expression at an age when Crane had achieved his and achieved it triumphantly he had the precocity of those doomed to die in youth I am convinced that when I met him he had a vague premonition of the shortness of his working day and in the heart of the man there was that which said that thou doest do quickly at 21 the son of an obscured New Jersey rector with but a scant-reading knowledge of French and no training had rivaled in technique the foremost craftsman of the Latin races in the six years since I met him a stranded reporter in two wars knew her breath escapes on land and sea and established himself as the first writer of his time in the picturing of episodic fragmentary life his friends have charged him with fickleness but he was a man who was in the preoccupation of haste he went from country to country from man to man absorbing all that was in them for him he had no time to look backward and no leisure for camaraderie he drank life to the leaves but at the banquet table where other men took their ease and justed over their wine he stood a dark and silent figure somber as Poe himself not wishing to be understood and he took his portion in haste with his loins girded and his shoes on his feet and his staff in his hand like one who must depart quickly End of When I Knew Stephen Crane by Willard Cather End of British and American Periodical Articles 1852 to 1905 by Various