Convulsiveness
Walt Whitman * Track #233 On Specimen Days
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Album Specimen Days
- #1The Great Unrest of which We are Part
Walt Whitman
- #2Nature and Democracy—Morality
Walt Whitman
- #3Final Confessions—Literary Tests
Walt Whitman
- #4After Trying a Certain Book
Walt Whitman
- #5At Present Writing—Personal
Walt Whitman
- #6Death of Longfellow
Walt Whitman
- #7Starting Newspapers
Walt Whitman
- #8My Native Sand and Salt Once More
Walt Whitman
- #9An Ossianic Night—Dearest Friends
Walt Whitman
- #10A Visit, at the Last, to R. W. Emerson
Walt Whitman
- #11Only a New Ferry Boat
Walt Whitman
- #12A Discovery of Old Age
Walt Whitman
- #13Other Concord Notations
Walt Whitman
- #14Boston Common—More of Emerson
Walt Whitman
- #15Some Old Acquaintances—Memories
Walt Whitman
- #16Millet’s Pictures—Last Items
Walt Whitman
- #17Hot Weather New York
Walt Whitman
- #18Birds—and a Caution
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- #19Ouster’s Last Rally
Walt Whitman
- #20Samples of my Common-Place Book
Walt Whitman
- #21The Boston of To-Day
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- #22My Tribute to Four Poets
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- #23A Couple of Old Friends—A Coleridge Bit
Walt Whitman
- #24A Week’s Visit to Boston
Walt Whitman
- #25Carlyle from American Points of View
Walt Whitman
- #26Death of Thomas Carlyle
Walt Whitman
- #27The Inhabitants—Good Living
Walt Whitman
- #28The St. Lawrence Line
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- #29Chicoutimi, and Ha-ha Bay
Walt Whitman
- #30The Savage Saguenay
Walt Whitman
- #31Grand Native Growth
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- #32Capes Eternity and Trinity
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- #33A Zollverein between the U. S. and Canada
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- #34Reminiscence of Elias Hicks
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- #35Sunday with the Insane
Walt Whitman
- #36Edgar Poe’s Significance
Walt Whitman
- #37Jaunting to Canada
Walt Whitman
- #38Loafing in the Woods
Walt Whitman
- #39Seeing Niagara to Advantage
Walt Whitman
- #40A Contralto Voice
Walt Whitman
- #41Beethoven’s Septette
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- #42A Hint of Wild Nature
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- #43President Hayes’s Speeches
Walt Whitman
- #44Upon our Own Land
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- #45An Interviewer’s Item
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- #46Nights on the Mississippi
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- #47St. Louis Memoranda
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- #48The Silent General
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- #49The Women of the West
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- #50Prairie Analogies—the Tree Question
Walt Whitman
- #51Mature Summer Days and Night
Walt Whitman
- #52Exposition Building—New City Hall—River-Trip
Walt Whitman
- #53A Fine Afternoon, 4 to 6
Walt Whitman
- #54Swallows on the River
Walt Whitman
- #55Central Park Walks and Talks
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- #56Two City Areas Certain Hours
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- #57Hudson River Sights
Walt Whitman
- #58Walter Dumont and his Medal
Walt Whitman
- #59Up the Hudson to Ulster County
Walt Whitman
- #60An Ulster County Waterfall
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- #61A Yankee Antique
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- #62Inauguration Ball
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- #63The Weather—Does it Sympathize with These Times?
Walt Whitman
- #64Wounds and Diseases
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- #65Death of President Lincoln
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- #66Female Nurses for Soldiers
Walt Whitman
- #67The Inauguration
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- #68Attitude of Foreign Governments During the War
Walt Whitman
- #69The Capitol by Gas-Light
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- #70Southern Escapees
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- #71A Model Hospital
Walt Whitman
- #72Boys in the Army
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- #73Burial of a Lady Nurse
Walt Whitman
- #74The Blue Everywhere
Walt Whitman
- #75Gifts—Money—Discrimination
Walt Whitman
- #76Death of a Hero
Walt Whitman
- #77Army Surgeons—Aid Deficiencies
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- #78A Case from Second Bull Run
Walt Whitman
- #79Items from My Note Books
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- #80Deserters
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- #81A New Army Organization fit for America
Walt Whitman
- #82A Yankee Soldier
Walt Whitman
- #83Virginia
Walt Whitman
- #84Summer of 1864
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- #85Rumors, Changes, Etc.
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- #86Paying the Bounties
Walt Whitman
- #87Down at the Front II
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- #88A Silent Night Ramble
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- #89Spiritual Characters among the Soldiers
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- #90Hospital Perplexity
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- #91Soldiers and Talks
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- #92Hospitals Ensemble
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- #93Death of a Wisconsin Officer
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- #94Cattle Droves about Washington
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- #95Abraham Lincoln
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- #96Ambulance Processions
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- #97Heated Term
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- #98A Cavalry Camp
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- #99The Most Inspiriting of all War’s Shows
Walt Whitman
- #100Battle of Gettysburg
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- #101Bad Wounds—the Young
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- #102Home-Made Music
Walt Whitman
- #103A New York Soldier
Walt Whitman
- #104A Night Battle over a Week Since
Walt Whitman
- #105The Wounded from Chancellorsville
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- #106My Preparations for Visits
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- #107Unnamed Remains the Bravest Soldier
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- #108Back to Washington
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- #109Patent-Office Hospital
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- #110An Army Hospital Ward
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- #111Two Brooklyn Boys
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- #112A Secesh Brave
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- #113Sources of Character—Results—1860
Walt Whitman
- #114After First Fredericksburg
Walt Whitman
- #115The White House by Moonlight
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- #116Fifty Hours Left Wounded on the Field
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- #117Down at the Front
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- #118The Stupor Passes—Something Else Begins
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- #119Hospital Scenes and Persons
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- #120A Connecticut Case
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- #121Contemptuous Feeling
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- #122Plays and Operas too
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- #123National Uprising and Volunteering
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- #124Through Eight Years
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- #125Genealogy—Van Velsor and Whitman
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- #126Broadway Sights
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- #127Opening of the Secession War
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- #128Omnibus Jaunts and Drivers
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- #129Two Old Family Interiors
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- #130The Old Whitman and Van Velsor Cemeteries
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- #131Paumanok, and my Life on it as Child and Young Man
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- #132Growth—Health—Work
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- #133Printing Office—Old Brooklyn
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- #134My First Reading—Lafayette
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- #135My Passion for Ferries
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- #136The Maternal Homestead
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- #137Answer to an Insisting Friend
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- #138A Happy Hour’s Command
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- #139Three Years Summ’d Up
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- #140The Million Dead, Too, Summ’d Up
Walt Whitman
- #141The Real War Will Never Get in the Books
Walt Whitman
- #142Some Specimen Cases
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- #143Hospital Scenes—Incidents
Walt Whitman
- #144Two Brothers, One South, One North
Walt Whitman
- #145A Glimpse of War’s Hell Scenes
Walt Whitman
- #146Union Prisoners South
Walt Whitman
- #147Battle of Bull Run, July, 1861
Walt Whitman
- #148By Emerson’s Grave
Walt Whitman
- #149Mississippi Valley Literature
Walt Whitman
- #150Earth’s Most Important Stream
Walt Whitman
- #151America’s Characteristic Landscape
Walt Whitman
- #152The Spanish Peaks—Evening on the Plains
Walt Whitman
- #153The Prairies and Great Plains in Poetry
Walt Whitman
- #154A Silent Little Follower—the Coreopsis
Walt Whitman
- #155Unfulfill’d Wants—the Arkansas River
Walt Whitman
- #156I Turn South and then East Again
Walt Whitman
- #157Denver Impressions
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- #158Art Features
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- #159The Parks
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- #160America’s Back-Bone
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- #161Steam-Power, Telegraphs, Etc.
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- #162New Scenes—New Joys
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- #163An Egotistical “Find”
Walt Whitman
- #164An Hour on Kenosha Summit
Walt Whitman
- #165On to Denver—A Frontier Incident
Walt Whitman
- #166Lawrence and Topeka, Kansas
Walt Whitman
- #167Missouri State
Walt Whitman
- #168In the Sleeper
Walt Whitman
- #169Begin a Long Jaunt West
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- #170Two Hours on the Minnesota
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- #171Departing of the Big Steamers
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- #172Thoughts Under an Oak—A Dream
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- #173A Quintette
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- #174The Oaks and I
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- #175A Sun-Bath—Nakedness
Walt Whitman
- #176Distant Sounds
Walt Whitman
- #177Mulleins and Mulleins
Walt Whitman
- #178Full-Starr’d Nights
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- #179Days at J.B.’s—Turf Fires—Spring Songs
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- #180The First Spring Day on Chestnut Street
Walt Whitman
- #181Meeting a Hermit
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- #182Scenes on Ferry and River—Last Winter’s Nights
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- #183Delaware River—Days and Nights
Walt Whitman
- #184A Civility Too Long Neglected
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- #185Hours for the Soul
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- #186Straw-Color’d and other Psyches
Walt Whitman
- #187Wild Flowers
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- #188A Night Remembrance
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- #189A Specimen Tramp Family
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- #190Manhattan from the Bay
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- #191Human and Heroic New York
Walt Whitman
- #192Happiness and Raspberries
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- #193Horse-Mint
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- #194Jaunt up the Hudson
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- #195Death of William Cullen Bryant
Walt Whitman
- #196Three of Us
Walt Whitman
- #197Bird Whistling
Walt Whitman
- #198The First Frost—Mems
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- #199Clover and Hay Perfume
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- #200An Unknown
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- #201February Days
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- #202Sundown Lights
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- #203Three Young Men’s Deaths
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- #204A Meadow Lark
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- #205The Common Earth, the Soil
Walt Whitman
- #206An Afternoon Scene
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- #207Birds and Birds and Birds
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- #208One of the Human Kinks
Walt Whitman
- #209The Gates Opening
Walt Whitman
- #210A Winter-Day on the Sea-Beach
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- #211Spring Overtures—Recreations
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- #212Sea-Shore Fancies
Walt Whitman
- #213In Memory of Thomas Paine
Walt Whitman
- #214Autumn Side-Bits
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- #215A Two Hours’ Ice-Sail
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- #216Locusts and Katy-Dids
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- #217The Sky—Days and Nights—Happiness
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- #218Crows and Crows
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- #219Colors—A Contrast
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- #220November 8, ’76
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- #221The Lesson of a Tree
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- #222A July Afternoon by the Pond
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- #223Sundown Perfume—Quail-Notes—the Hermit Thrush
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- #224Summer Sights and Indolences
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- #225Cedar-Apples
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- #226Bumble-Bees
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- #227Birds Migrating at Midnight
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- #228An Early Summer Reveille
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- #229To the Spring and Brook
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- #230New Themes Enter’d Upon
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- #231Entering a Long Farm-Lane
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- #232A Soldier on Lincoln
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- #233Convulsiveness
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- #234Hospitals Closing
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- #235The Grand Review
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- #236Typical Soldiers
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- #237An Interregnum Paragraph
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- #238Calhoun’s Real Monument
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- #239No Good Portrait of Lincoln
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- #240Some Sad Cases Yet
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- #241Releas’d Union Prisoners from South
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- #242Western Soldiers
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- #243The Armies Returning
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- #244Death of a Pennsylvania Soldier
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- #245Scene at the Capitol
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- #246Sherman’s Army Jubilation—its Sudden Stoppage
Walt Whitman
Convulsiveness by Walt Whitman
Performed by
Walt WhitmanConvulsiveness Annotated
As I have look'd over the proof-sheets of the preceding pages, I have once or twice fear'd that my diary would prove, at best, but a batch of convulsively written reminiscences. Well, be it so.
They are but parts of the actual distraction, heat, smoke and excitement of those times. The war itself, with the temper of society preceding it, can indeed be best described by that very word convulsiveness.