spent, and my soul looks
out upon the great plain--upon the soft, night-blooming cities, with
their huge machines striving in sleep, might lifts itself out upon me.
I rest.

I know that when I stand before a foundry hammering out the floors of
the world, clashing its awful cymbals against the night, I lift my
soul to it, and in some way--I know not how--while it sings to me I
grow strong and glad.

PART THREE

THE MACHINES AS POETS

I

PLATO AND THE GENERAL ELECTRIC WORKS

I have an old friend who lives just around the corner from one of the
main lines of travel in New England, and whenever I am passing near by
and the railroads let me, I drop in on him awhile and quarrel about
art. It's a good old-fashioned comfortable, disorderly conversation we
have generally, the kind people used to have more than they do
now--sketchy and not too wise--the kind that makes one think of things
one wishes one had said, afterward.

We always drift a little at first, as if of course we could talk about
other things if we wanted to, but we both know, and know every time,
that in a few minutes we shall be deep in a discussion of the Things
That Are Beautiful and the Things That Are Not.

Brim thinks that I have picked out more things to be beautiful than I
have a right to, or than any man has, and he is trying to put a stop
to it. He thinks that there are enough beautiful things in this world
that have been beautiful a long while, without having people--well,
people like me, for instance, poking blindly around among all these
modern brand-new things hoping that in spite of appearances there is
something one can do with them that will make them beautiful enough to
go with the rest. I'm afraid Brim gets a little personal in talking
with me at times and I might as well say that, while disagreeing in a
conversation with Brim does not lead to calling names it does seem to
lead logically to one's going away, and trying to find afterwards,
some thing that is the matter with him.

"The trouble with you, my dear Brim, is," I say (on paper, afterwards,
as the train speeds away), "that you have a false-classic or
Stucco-Greek mind. The Greeks, the real Greeks, would have liked all
these things--trolley cars, cables, locomotives,--seen the beautiful
in them, if they had to do their living with them every day, the way
we do. You would say you were more Greek than I am, but when one
thinks of it, you are just going around liki