The Walt Whitman Archive
Complete Prose Works
There is a tulip poplar
within sight 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 or four feet higher up. On the south
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side an
arm has shot out from which rise two stems, each to 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, ate dinner
therein. It is supposed twelve to fifteen men could now, at one time, stand
within its trunk. The severe winds of 1877 and 1878 did not seem to damage it,
and the two stems send out yearly many blossoms, scenting the air immediately
about it with their sweet perfume. It is entirely unprotected by other trees,
on a hill.—Woodstown, N.J., "Register," April 15,
'79.