urbstones of
society, calling society names and taking liberties with it, tripping
people up; hoodlums with dollars, all these micks of money!--O, that
society had some big, calm, serene way like some huge hearty London
policeman, of taking hold of them--taking hold of them by the seats of
their little trousers if need be, and taking them home to Mother--some
way of setting them down hard in their chairs and making them
thoughtful! Nothing but a national literature will do this. "Life,"
(which is, with one exception, perhaps, the only religious weekly we
have left in America) succeeds a little and has some spiritual value
because it succeeds in making American millionaires look funny, and in
making them want to get away and live in Europe. But "Life" is not
enough; it merely hitches us along from day to day and keeps our courage
up. We want in America a literature, we want the thing done thoroughly
and forever and once for all. We want an Aristophanes, a master who
shall go gloriously laughing through our world, through our chimneys
and blind machines, pot-bellied fortunes, empty successes, all these
tiny, queer little men of wind and bladder, until we have a nation
filled with a divine laughter, with strong, manful, happy visions of
what men are for.

All we have to do is to have a News-book--a bookful of the kind of rich
men we want, then we will have them. We will see men piling over each
other all day to be them. Men have wanted to make money because making
money has been supposed to mean certain things about a man. The moment
it ceases to mean them, they will want to make other things.

Where is the news about what we really want?

----, when I took him to the train yesterday, spoke glowingly of the way
the Standard Oil Trust had reduced oil from twenty-nine cents to eleven
cents.

There was not time to say anything. I just thought a minute of how they
did it.

Why is it that people--so many good people will speak of oil at eleven
cents in this way, as if it were a kind of little kingdom of heaven?

I admit that eleven cents from twenty-nine cents leaves eighteen cents.

I do not deny that the Standard Oil Trust has saved me eighteen cents.
But what have they taken away out of my life and taken out of my sense
of the world and of the way things go in it and out of my faith in human
nature to toss me eighteen cents?

If I could have for myself and others the sense of the world that I had
before, would I no