WHITMAN
Walt Whitman passionately adopted the garb of Soldier’s Missionary. He began to develop a routine – the essential infrastructure of any profession. He started, as he said, by “fortifying myself with previous rest, the bath, clean clothes, a good meal, and as cheerful an appearance as possible.” Before he sallied forth, he prepared a grab bag of treats, including candy, fruit, writing supplies, tobacco, socks, cookies, underwear. He would then set forth to the hospital wards and sessions of “visiting” that might last anywhere from two hours to four or five hours. He embraced his work with everything he had. “Behold,” he had written earlier in Leaves of Grass (as if foreshadowing his work in the hospitals), “I do not give lectures or a little charity. When I give I give myself.”
–Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your Life
another eye opens 
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