t us to--most
people get in the way. And when people get in the way we lay about us a
little--We hit them. We have written this book, because we want to hit a
great many people at once. We find them everywhere about us, in monster
cities, huge thoughtless anthills of them, and they will not let us live
a larger and a richer life. We say to them, We resent your houses your
shoes, your voices, your fears, your motives, your wills, the diseases
you make us walk past every day, the rows of things you seem to think
will do, and that you think we must get used to, and we do not propose,
if we can help it, to get used to what you think will do for Churches;
nor to what you think will do for a government or to the little lonely,
scattered, toyschool-houses, that when you come into the world, fresh
and strange and happy you all proceed solemnly to coop your souls in.
Nor do we want to get used to your hem-and-haw parliaments and your
funny little perfumed prophets--your prophets lying down or propped up
with pillows or your poets wringing their hands. Nor will we be put off
with all your gracefully feeble, watery, lovely little pastel religions
for this grim and mighty modern world. We are American men. We do not
propose to be driven out to sea, to stand face to face every day with
what is true and full of beauty and magic, or to have skies and
mountains and stars palmed off on us as companions instead of men!

This is what five million men are trying to express in writing this
book. If people deny that I have the right to give the news about
America for five million men; if they say that this is not true about
American human nature, that this is not the news, then I will say, _I am
the news_! I am this sort of an American! God helping me, I say it!
"Look at _me_!" I am this sort of man of whom I am writing! If I am not
this sort of man this afternoon, I will be in the morning! Though I go
down as a hiss and as laughter and as a by-word and a mocking to the end
of my days--_I_ am this sort of man! I say, "Look at _me_!"

If you will not believe me--that this is an American, if you say that I
cannot prove that there are five million of men like this in America,
then I will still say, "Here is _one_! What will you do with ME?" Though
I die in laughter, all my desires and all my professions in a tumult
about my soul, I say it to this nation, "Your laws, your programs, your
philosophies, your I wills, and I won'ts, I say, shall reck