In the early days of our acquaintance with him, which rapidly grew to intimacy, my mother once asked him if he had ever been in love. After a long pause he answered somewhat reluctantly, I thought, “Your question, Abby, stirs a fellow up.” Although he would not admit that he had ever been “really in love,” he took from his pocket a photograph of a very beautiful girl (remember, he was still in his thirties) and showed it to us. That is all we ever knew about the original of the picture either then or afterwards, but I well remember the girl’s exceptional beauty.

-Helen Price

          Helen E. Price, “Reminiscences of Walt Whitman,” New York Evening Post Book Review, 31 May 1919, p. 2: Myerson 275.