Page:Morley--Travels in Philadelphia.djvu/153

, if you wish. He cannot be inclosed in a formula. He asks you to draw up your own formula as you read him. Rest assured, William Blake would not have found him obscure. "If you want me again, look for me under your bootsoles." Is not that the very accent of Blake?

There is marvelous drama in Camden for the seeing eye. The first scene is Mickle street, that dingy, smoke-swept lane of mean houses. The visitors from oversea stood almost aghast when they saw the pathetic vista. For years they had dwelt on Whitman's magnificent messages of pride and confidence:

Perhaps they had conjured to mind a clean little cottage such as an English suburb might offer: a dainty patch of wallflowers under the front door, a shining brass knocker, a sideboard of mahogany with an etching of Walt on the wall. No wonder, then, that the deathplace of the poet with "audience interminable" came as a shock.

And yet, one wonders, is not that faded box, with its flag hanging from the second story and little Louis Skymer's boyish sign in the window—Rabbits for sale cheap—and the backyard littered with hutches and the old nose-broken carved bust of Walt chucked away in a corner—is it not in a way strangely appropriate? Would not Walt almost have preferred it to be so, with its humble