orse, I was afraid of myself too. I was afraid I really would.

I am afraid now, or rather I would be, if I had not drilled through to
the news about myself and about other people and about human nature that
I am putting into this chapter.

* * * * *

I have written five hundred pages in this book on an awkward and
dangerous subject like the Golden Rule, and I appeal to the reader--I
ask him humbly, hopefully, gratefully if he can honestly say (except for
a minute here and there when I have been tired and slipped up), if he
has really felt improved or felt that I was trying to improve him in
this book.

On your honour, Gentle Reader--you who have been with me five hundred
pages!

You say "Yes"?

Then I appeal to your sense of fairness. If you truly feel I have been
trying to improve you in this book, turn this leaf down here and stop.
It is only fair to me. Close the book with your improved and being
improved feeling and never open it again until it passes over. You have
no right to go on page after page calling me names, as it were, right in
the middle of my own book in this way behind my back, you!--hundreds and
thousands of miles away from me, by your own lamp, by your own
window--you come to me here between these two helpless pasteboard covers
where I cannot get out at you, where I cannot answer back, and you say
that I am trying to improve you!

Ah, Gentle Reader, forgive me! God forgive me! Believe me, I never
meant, not if it could possibly be helped, to improve you! If you insist
on it and keep saying that I have been improving you, all I can say is
that I was merely looking as if I were improving you. _You_ did it. I
did not. God help me if I am trying to improve you! I am trying to find
out in this book who I am. If, incidentally, while I am quietly working
away on this for five hundred pages, you find out who you are yourself,
and then drop into a gentle glowing improved feeling all by yourself, do
not mix me up in it. I deny that I have tried to improve you or anybody.
I have written this book to get my own way, to express my America. I
have written it to say "i," to say "I," to say (the first minute you let
me), "you and I," to say we, WE about America--to drive the news through
to a President of what America is like.

I am not improving you. I am telling you what may or may not be news
about you.

Take it or leave it.

=V=

I want to be good.

I do not feel