Even Whitman could only articulate in terms of wonder.
Impulses and Prohibitions
One day last week a man - a regular man, neither a decided proletarian
nor a typical bourgeois - but just a man was walking along. He was
dressed in average clothes, he was shaved and carried a suit case and
didn't look out of work and was evidently going somewhere.
He was walking along with this suit case - it was on Larkin near
McAllister about two o'clock on one of those superb days of last week -
and he came to a place where there was a stretch of grass near the
sidewalk. I think he was hot and the suit case was getting heavy. . . .
At any rate when he saw that grass, tall, dark green and fragrant, he
immediately lay down on it, pulled his hat over his eyes and, I expect,
went to sleep. It sounds so free and easy written down. Which makes it
no less significant.
First, it was significantly Western. An Easterner or a Middle Westerner
would have thought it over first. Then the fact that the man was so
average made it significant. If he had looked like a vagabond it would
have been not even an incident. It is we who are respectable who are
fettered by Grundy. It was a logical thing to do and natural and
terribly human, but most of us can't do the logical thing and natural
even if inside we do feel terribly human.
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