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that it fibre and strengthen

About This Item

  • Title: that it fibre and strengthen
  • Date: About 1854
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.07869
  • Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from The Walt Whitman Archive I: Whitman Manuscripts at the Library of Congress, ed. Joel Myerson (New York: Garland, 1993), 2:522-523; Major American Authors on CD-Rom: Walt Whitman (Westport, CT: Primary Source Media, 1997). The transcription was then checked against digital images of the original. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This manuscript is a partial draft of "Memorial in Behalf of a Freer Municipal Government, and Against Sunday Restrictions," a public letter printed in the Brooklyn Star on October 20, 1854. Whitman probably drafted the manuscript shortly before the piece was published.
  • Related Item(s):
    • Draft lines of poetry on the back of this manuscript leaf relate to early versions of "Song of Myself" and "To Think of Time." See loc.00042.
    • See wwa.00585.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "that it fibre and strengthen." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 08 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: loc.07869.xml (TEI)

Key

Textual Feature Appearance
Overwritten brown with strikethrough
Added inline purple with double underline
Uncertain gray with wavy underline
Supplied from another source turquoise with brackets
Metamark green with triple underline
Long deletion gray background with top and bottom border
  [begin leaf 1 recto]
[cut away]—that it ^[cut away] fibres and strengthens and vital[cut away] all good things, and thatwhich is good, and weaken erase all which is bad.—Compulsion, on the other hand is a temporary support, gained at the price of much bad feeling and reaction.— schools—proud of ^and valuing it for its good name works of art architecture parks, ornaments, ^aquaducts and avenues ^and the perfection of its civilization and conveniences—[illegible]—and possessed ^Every one of these officers should be possessed with the genuine eternal American ideas of liberty, friendliness amplitude and ^native courage.—It is all nonsense to suppose fancy that the sole sphere of these fine such fine traits must necessarily can only be on some diffused and higher and more diffused ^and commanding scale, as Governor or Cabinet Senator or President.—The right sort of men will exemplify them just as well here directly at our doors or in our City Hall.—
  [begin leaf 1 verso]
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