William Whitman

“The supreme contemporary example of such an inability to feel evil is of course Walt Whitman. "His favorite occupation," writes his disciple, Dr. Bucke "seemed to be strolling or sauntering about outdoors by himself, looking at the grass, the trees, the flowers, the vistas of light, the varying aspects of the sky, and listening to the birds, the crickets, the tree frogs, and all the hundreds of natural sounds.””

“I'll admit that I was surprised to see two decades of film journalism canonized in the same church as Lincoln, Thoreau, Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson; that's a fairly loose canon.””

“When Whitman became better known, he rewrote the story removing much of its overt homoeroticism. He recast it as an abstinence tract, and retitled it “The Child and the Profligate.” Originally however it was known as “The Child’s Champion.””