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    Walt Whitman on Election Day

    ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER, 1884 If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,’Twould not be you, Niagara – nor you, ye limitless prairies – nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado, Nor you, Yosemite – nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing, Nor Oregon’s white cones – nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes – nor Mississippi’s stream: This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name – the still small voice vibrating -America’s choosing day, (The heart of it not in the chosen – the act itself the main,…