After his return, he seems to have worked with his father in Brooklyn for
about three years, building and selling houses. He was then also engaged on
a collection of poems, which, in 1855, he published under the title of
_Leaves of Grass_. From this time he was known as an author.
In 1862 he went South to nurse his brother, who was wounded in the Civil
War. For nearly three years, the poet served as a volunteer nurse in the
army hospitals in Washington and its vicinity. Few good Samaritans have
performed better service. He estimated that he attended on the field and in
the hospital eighty thousand of the sick and wounded. In after days many a
soldier testified that his recovery was aided by Whitman's kindly
ministrations. Finally, however, his own iron constitution gave way under
this strain.
When the war closed, he was given a government clerkship in Washington, but
was dismissed in 1865, because of hostility aroused by his _Leaves of
Grass_. He soon received another appointment, however, which he held until
1873, when a stroke of paralysis forced him to relinquish his position. He
went to Camden, New Jersey, where he lived the life of a semi-invalid
during the rest of his existence, writing as his health would permit.
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