The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XVI. Early National Literature, Part II; Later National Literature, Part I.
§ 3. Printer
Whitman’s youth in Brooklyn, though full of interest, was uneventful. As a child of six he was flattered by Lafayette’s chancing to lay his hands on him during a visit to the city in 1825. He attended the public school for a few years, impressing his teacher, Benjamin Buel Halleck, only with his good nature, his clumsiness, and his poverty of special promise. He ran with the boys of the street and was familiar with the city and its environs, especially with Fulton Ferry, whose slip was not far from his home. Not Irving, not Charles Lamb was more intimately or passionately fond of city life, with its opportunities for human contact and for varied sights, than was Whitman, both as boy and man. When about eleven years old he left school to become an office-boy, first to a lawyer and then to a doctor, the former of whom kindly afforded him opportunities for reading such books as the Arabian Nights and the poetry and romances of Scott. At twelve he was learning to set type, in a building once used as Washington’s headquarters, under the instruction of a veteran printer who had many tales to tell of Revolutionary heroism. Next he went to set type for a few dollars a week on Aldin Spooner’s Star. He had already felt the satisfaction of authorship when “sentimental bits” had appeared from his pen in the newspapers. Later he became a compositor on unknown journals in New York.