“Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public

assembly, yet never told them a world,

Lived the same life with the rest, the same old

laughing, gnawing, sleeping,

Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or

actress,

The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as

great as we like,

Or as small as we like, or both great and small.”

–Walt Whitman, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry