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[Mrs. Horace Mann has written]

About This Item

  • Title: [Mrs. Horace Mann has written]
  • Date: 12 December 1857
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00982
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 12 December 1857: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Thara Michaelis Kaylen Michaelis Cassandra Jannel Simms Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "[Mrs. Horace Mann has written]." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00982.xml (TEI)
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☞Mrs. Horace Mann1 has written a volume to prove that rich and indegestible food generates bad morals. If this and its converse holds good, the Indian Sepoys2 who live on rice, and the Tipperary boys who feed on praties, ought to be meek and quiet, if not positively pious, personages. It would follow, also, that the true way to Christianise the outside barbarians of Borioboola Gha and other heathen localities, would be to feed them on pap and bread and cheese. If our diet regulates disposition, the inmates of our Penitentiaries, who live on mush and molasses, ought to be thoroughly reformed and made penitent by a few days incarceration. Horace Greeley3 would be the mildest mannered and most civil of men, from his vegetarian diet, if Mrs. Mann’s theory were correct.

Notes:

1. Mary T. Peabody Mann (1806–1887) was an American educator and author who wrote the children's book The Flower People. She was the wife of politician and educational reformer Horace Mann (1796–1859), often referred to as the Father of the Common School. [back]

2. "Sepoy" refers to an Indian soldier employed in a European (esp. British) military. [back]

3. Horace Greeley (1811–1872) was editor of the New York Tribune and a prominent advocate of social and political reform. Greeley generally supported the Whig Party, though he ran for president as a Democrat in the election of 1872. For more information, see Susan Belasco, "The New York Daily Tribune," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]

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