factories or business or something like that--you
know--and they've got hold of everything, so a fellow's got to do the same
thing or where is he?

THE MAN

That's the first question, certainly: where is he? But where is he if he
does do the same thing?

THE BOY

Why, he's with the rest. And _they_ don't ask that question....

THE MAN

I'm afraid they don't. It would be interesting to be there if they should
begin to ask it, wouldn't it?

THE BOY

Yes.... I'd like to be there when some _I_ know ask themselves! But they
never will. Why should they?

THE MAN

Don't you mean how _can_ they?

THE BOY

Yes, of course. They don't ask the question because the big thing they are
doing seems to be the answer beforehand. But it isn't! Not compared with
the Old Testament. So we have to ask it for ourselves. And that's why I
came here....

THE MAN

Oh. You want to know where _they_ are, with their power, or where _you_
will be without it?

THE BOY

Where I'll be. I hate it! But what else is there to-day?

THE MAN

Why, there's you.

THE BOY

But that's just it! What am I for if I can't join in? I came to you....
You don't mind my talking, do you?

THE MAN

On the contrary.

THE BOY

Well, everybody I know is a part of it, so how could they tell me what to
do outside of it? I've been wondering about that for a year. Before then,
when I was just a boy, the world seemed full of everything, but now it
seems to have only one thing. That or nothing. Then one day I saw a
photograph somebody had cut out of a Sunday paper, and I thought to myself
there's a man who seems outside, entirely outside, and yet he has
something. It wasn't all or nothing for him ... and I wondered who it was.
Then I found your book, with the same picture in it. You bet I read it
right off! It was the first time in my life I had ever felt power as great
as skyscrapers and railroads and yet apart from them. Outside of all they
mean. Like the Old Testament. Those poems!

THE MAN

You liked them?

THE BOY

It was more than that. How can a fellow _like_ the ocean, or a snow storm?

THE MAN

Is that what you thought they were like?

THE BOY

Why, they went off like a fourteen inch gun! Not a whine about life in
them--not a single regret for anything. They were wonderful! They seemed
to pick up mountains and cities and toss them all about like toys. They
made me feel that what I was looking for was able to conquer what I