Volume 34 Number 3 ( 2017) pps. 262-357 Special Double Issue: Walt Whitman’s Newly Discovered “Jack Engle”

Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: An Auto- Biography [Walt Whitman]

ISSN 0737-0679 (Print) ISSN 2153-3695 (Online)

Recommended Citation [Walt Whitman]. "Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: An Auto-Biography," ed. Zachary Turpin. Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 34 (2017), 262-357.

This Discovery is brought to you for free and open access by Iowa Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in Walt Whitman Quarterly Review by an authorized administrator of Iowa Research Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WWQR VOL. 34 NOS.3/4 (WINTER /SPRING 2017)

A Story of New York at the Present Time LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF JACK ENGLE:

AN AUTO-BIOGRAPHY;

IN WHICH THE READER WILL FIND SOME FAMILIAR CHARACTERS.

֍ This story will be completed in six numbers, or less. The Writer having placed the manuscript complete in our hands we shall give such quantities weekly as to enable the reader to see the end within that time.—EDS.

PREFATORY.—Candidly reader we are going to tell you a true story. The narrative is written in the first person; because it was originally jotted down by the principal actor in it, for the entertainment of a valued friend. From that narrative, although the present is somewhat elaborated, with an unimportant leaving out here, and putting in there, there has been no departure in substance. The main incidents were of actual occurrence in this good city of New York; and there will be a sprinkling of our readers by no means small, who will wonder how the deuce such facts, (as they happen to know them) ever got into print. We shall, in the narrative, give the performers in this real drama, unreal names; and for good reasons, throw just enough of our own toggery about them to prevent their being identified by strangers. Some of the faces embodied in the story have come to our knowl- edge from sources other than that above mentioned[.] These, we shall add, or withhold, as the interest of the detail may demand.

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CHAPTER I. An approved specimen of young America—the Lawyer in his office—Old age, down at the heel—entrance of Telemachus and Ulysses—a bargain closed.

Punctually at half past 12, the noon-day sun shining flat on the pave- ment of Wall street, a youth with the pious name of Nathaniel, clapt upon his closely cropt head, a straw hat, for which he had that very morning given the sum of twenty-five cents, and announced his inten- tion of going to his dinner.

“COVERT Attorney at Law” stared into the room (it was a down-town law-office) from the door which was opened wide and fastened back, for coolness; and the real Covert, at that moment, looked up from his cloth-covered table, in an inner apartment, whose carpet, book-cases, musty smell, big chair, with leather cushions, and the panels of only one window out of three being opened, and they but partially so, announced it as the sanctum of the sovereign master there. That gentleman’s garb marked him as one of the sect of Friends, or Quakers. He was a tallish man, consid- erably round-shouldered, with a pale, square, closely shaven face; and one who possessed any expertness as a physiognomist, could not mistake a certain sanctimonious satanic look out of the eyes. From some suspicion that he didn’t appear well in that part of his counte- nance, Mr. Covert had a practice of casting down his visual organs. On this occasion, however, they lighted on his errand-boy. “Yes, go to thy dinner; both can go,” said he, “for I want to be alone.” And Wigglesworth, the clerk, a tobacco-scented old man—he smoked and chewed incessantly—left his high stool, in the corner where he had been slowly copying some document. Old Wigglesworth! I must drop a word of praise and regret upon you here; for the Lord gave you a good soul, ridiculous old codger that you were.

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