Text Discussion #4: Inauguration Ball - Specimen Days

Ned Rorem sets most of this entry.  After hearing some feedback saying that the strikethrough was difficult to read, I'm going to italicize the words Rorem set while publishing the whole entry here.

Inauguration Ball

March 6.--I have been up to look at the dance and supper-rooms, for the inauguration ball at the Patent office; and I could not help thinking, what a different scene they presented to my view a while since, fill'd with a crowded mass of the worst wounded of the war, brought in from second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredricksbugh.  To-night, beautiful women, perfumes, the violins' sweetness, the polka and the waltz; then the amputation, the blue face, the groan, the glassy eye of the dying, the clotted rag, the odor of wounds and blood, and many a mother's son amid strangers, passing away untended there, (for the crowd of the badly hurt was great, and much for nurse to do, and much for surgeon.)

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Text Discussion #2: Specimen Case - Specimen Days

"Specimen Case" is from an excerpt of "Some Specimen Cases" where Whitman writes about several wounded soldiers he is visiting.  During 1863 Whitman served as a visitor to the wounded, both Confederate and Union, in the hospitals around Washington.  I'll talk more about this later in a series of posts on Whitman's biography.  For the purposes of this discussion, I think it is enough to say that Whitman was devoted to what he saw as his duty and his contribution to the war effort.  Even though he was a strong pro-Union man and abolitionist, this devotion went beyond that.  His caring for soldiers from the South and the North prove this.

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