The Walt Whitman Archive
Commentary
Interviews and Reminiscences
About this Item
Title: [party, a night of]
Creator: Anonymous
Whitman Archive ID: med.00623
Source: Our transcription is based on a digital image of a clipping in the Thomas Biggs Harned Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1842–1937, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the interviews, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Brett Barney, Nic Swiercek, and Shea Montgomerey
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party, a night of and laughter of the young m the old, and by-and-by pause general vialty. "Now, Mr. Whitman," spoke up one of the girls, "what have you to say about Thanksgiving? Won't you give us a sermon in advance, sober us down?" The sage nodded smilingly, looked a moment at the blaze of the great wood fire, ran his forefinger and left through the heavy white moustache that might have otherwise impeded his voice, and began: "Thanksgiving goes probably far deeper than you folks suppose. I am not sure but it is the source of the highest poetry—as in parts of the Bible.
"We Americans devote an official day to it every year; yet I sometimes fear the real article is almost dead or dying in our self-sufficient, independent Republic. Gratitude, anyhow, has never been made half enough of by the moralists; it is indispensable to a complete character, man's or woman's—the disposition to be appreciative, thankful. That is the main matter, the element—what geologists call the trend. Of my own life and writings I estimate the giving thanks part, with what it infers, as essentially the best item. I should say the quality of gratitude rounds the whole emotional nature; I should say love and faith would quite lack vitality without it. There are people—shall I call them even religious people, as things go?—who have no such trend to their disposition. I pity 'em."