... I have written impromptu, and shall let
it all go at that. Let me at least be human! Human, indeed, he was, a
tender, all-welcoming host of Everyman, of his idolized (if somewhat
overpowering) American democracy. Man in the street, in his swarms, poor
crazed faces in the State asylum, prisoners in Sing Sing, prostitute,
whose dead body reminded him not of a lost soul, but only of a sad,
forlorn, and empty house--it mattered not; he opened his heart to them,
one and all. "I see beyond each mark that wonder, a kindred soul. O the
bullet could never kill what you really are, dear friend."
The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.
"Yours for you," he exclaims, welding in a phrase his unparalleled
egotism, his beautiful charity, "yours for you, who ever you are, as mine
for me." It is the essence of philosophy and of religion, for all the
wonders of heaven and earth are significant "only because of the Me in
the centre."
This was the secret of his tender, unassuming ministrations. He had none
of that shrinking timidity, that fear of intrusion, that uneasiness in
the presence of the tragic and the pitiful, which so often numb and
oppress those who would willingly give themselves and their best to the
needy and suffering, but whose intellect misgives them.
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