Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul. - Walt Whitman

A Hand-Mirror Hold it up sternly — see this it sends back, (who is it? is it you?) Outside fair costume, within ashes and filth, No more a flashing eye, no more a sonorous voice or springy step, Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step, A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh, Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous, Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination, Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams, Words babble, hearing and touch callous, No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex; Such from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence, Such a result so soon — and from such a beginning!

What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

It is almost incredible what a little stretch of nature will do to arouse a fellow — convert him, so to speak. I cannot think of a rarer experience than one I met on the river Saguenay, up there in Canada. The river’s water is an inky black — a curious study, I believe, to this day to the scientific men: take it up in a bucket, and it is still unmistakably black — the color of the stream. Oh! that great day! Down the stream a boat — sails open — wing-a-wing — one one side, one the other — patched, stained, heavy — but oh! how beautiful! It was a curious revelation out of little means. Wing-a-wing is rarely fine anyhow — I have not known it much in pictures — but few artists can accomplish it. See then, the large result of what may seem a small impulse. Why should we go hunt beauty then — I should rather ask — where can you go to get away from it?