Complete Prose Works of Walt Whitman | Page 6

the possession by the family of some twelve or fifteen slaves,
house and field servants, gave things quite a patriarchial look. The very young darkies
could be seen, a swarm of them, toward sundown, in this kitchen, squatted in a circle on
the floor, eating their supper of Indian pudding and milk. In the house, and in food and
furniture, all was rude, but substantial. No carpets or stoves were known, and no coffee,
and tea or sugar only for the women. Rousing wood fires gave both warmth and light on
winter nights. Pork, poultry, beef, and all the ordinary vegetables and grains were
plentiful. Cider was the men's common drink, and used at meals. The clothes were mainly
homespun. Journeys were made by both men and women on horseback. Both sexes
labor'd with their own hands-the men on the farm--the women in the house and around it.
Books were scarce. The annual copy of the almanac was a treat, and was pored over
through the long winter evenings. I must not forget to mention that both these families
were near enough to the sea to behold it from the high places, and to hear in still hours
the roar of the surf; the latter, after a storm, giving a peculiar sound at night. Then all
hands, male and female, went down frequently on beach and bathing parties, and the men
on practical expeditions for cutting salt hay, and for clamming and fishing."--John
Burroughs's NOTES.
"The ancestors of Walt Whitman, on both the paternal and maternal sides, kept a good

table, sustained the hospitalities, decorums, and an excellent social reputation in the
county, and they were often of mark'd individuality. If space permitted, I should consider
some of the men worthy special description; and still more some of the women. His
great-grandmother on the paternal side, for instance, was a large swarthy woman, who
lived to a very old age. She smoked tobacco, rode on horseback like a man, managed the
most vicious horse, and, becoming a widow in later life, went forth every day over her
farm-lands, frequently in the saddle, directing the labor of her slaves, in language in
which, on exciting occasions, oaths were not spared. The two immediate grandmothers
were, in the best sense, superior women. The maternal one (Amy Williams before
marriage) was a Friend, or Quakeress, of sweet, sensible character, house-wifely
proclivities, and deeply intuitive and spiritual. The other (Hannah Brush,) was an equally
noble, perhaps stronger character, lived to be very old, had quite a family of sons, was a
natural lady, was in early life a school-mistress, and had great solidity of mind. W. W.
himself makes much of the women of his ancestry."--The Same.
Out from these arrieres of persons and scenes, I was born May 31, 1819. And now to
dwell awhile on the locality itself--as the successive growth-stages of my infancy,
childhood, youth and manhood were all pass'd on Long Island, which I sometimes feel as
if I had incorporated. I roam'd, as boy and man, and have lived in nearly all parts, from
Brooklyn to Montauk point.
PAUMANOK, AND MY LIFE ON IT AS CHILD AND YOUNG MAN
Worth fully and particularly investigating indeed this Paumanok, (to give the spot its
aboriginal name[3],) stretching east through Kings, Queens and Suffolk counties, 120
miles altogether--on the north Long Island sound, a beautiful, varied and picturesque
series of inlets, "necks" and sea-like expansions, for a hundred miles to Orient point. On
the ocean side the great south bay dotted with countless hummocks, mostly small, some
quite large, occasionally long bars of sand out two hundred rods to a mile-and-a-half
from the shore. While now and then, as at Rockaway and far east along the Hamptons,
the beach makes right on the island, the sea dashing up without intervention. Several
light-houses on the shores east; a long history of wrecks tragedies, some even of late
years. As a youngster, I was in the atmosphere and traditions of many of these wrecks--of
one or two almost an observer. Off Hempstead beach for example, was the loss of the
ship "Mexico" in 1840, (alluded to in "the Sleepers" in L. of G.) And at Hampton, some
years later, the destruction of the brig "Elizabeth," a fearful affair, in one of the worst
winter gales, where Margaret Fuller went down, with her husband and child.
Inside the outer bars or beach this south bay is everywhere comparatively shallow; of
cold winters all thick ice on the surface. As a boy I often went forth with a chum or two,
on those frozen fields, with hand-sled, axe and eel-spear, after messes of eels. We would
cut holes in the ice, sometimes striking quite an eel-bonanza, and filling our baskets with
great, fat, sweet, white-meated fellows. The