The lover of Whitman comes inevitably to associate him with character and
personal qualities. I sometimes meet women whom I say are of the Whitman
type--the kind of woman he invoked and predicted. They bear children, and
are not ashamed; motherhood is their pride and their joy: they are
cheerful, tolerant, friendly, think no evil, meet high and low on equal
terms; they walk, row, climb mountains; they reach forth into the actual
world of questions and events, open-minded, sympathetic, frank, natural,
good-natured; the mates and companions of their husbands, keeping pace
with them in all matters; home-makers, but larger than home, considerate,
forgiving, unceremonious,--in short, the large, fresh, wholesome open-air
natures whose ideal so completely possessed Walt Whitman.
A British critic wisely says the gift of Whitman to us is the gift of life
rather than of literature, but it is the gift of life through literature.
Indeed, Whitman means a life as much as Christianity means a life. He
says:--
"Writing and talk do not prove me."