The Egalitarian (1819 to 1892) Born to a working class family, Walt Whitman had to quit formal schooling at the age of 11 and start working as office boy for some prominent lawyers. Walt began self educating, gaining wide knowledge through visits to museums, nonstop reading, as well as engaging in conversations and debates. He learned a lot about literature, theater, history, geography, music and archeology through his informal education. At the age of 12, he was already contributing to newspapers, and at 15 his first signed piece was published in the New Yorks newspaper, Mirror. When he reached 17, a destructive fire wiped out the growing newspaper industry, forcing Whitman to teach in the Long Island towns for income. However, teaching made him depressed, and his poetic works bore this feeling of him. Whitman also tried putting up his own newspaper in 1838, with the name The Long Islander, which sadly folded after just a year. This dragged him back to teaching in the Southold, which he abruptly abandoned for fiction writing, real journalism, and poetry, due to the rumors of him committing sodomy. Until now, this rumor hasnt been fully ended because of his close mysterious relationships with men. It seems, though, that his return to Southold and creating unperturbed journalistic pieces suggested that he considered himself temperamentally unsuited for teaching. See more at: http://www.pulseuniform.com/nursing/famous nurses.asp#sthash.g8EQqKE2.dpuf