o imprisonment for life--
And you may go and take your wife.

Come to the Park[1] with me;
I'll show you crass stupidity
Which sentences the hawk and fox
To inactivity, and locks
The door of freedom on the lynx
Where puma pines and eagle stinks.
Never a slaver's fetid hold
Has held the misery untold
That crowds the great cats' kennels where
Their vacant eyes glare blank despair
Half crazed by sloth, half dazed by fear
All day, all night, year after year.

To the swift, clean things that cleave the air
To the swift, clean things that cleave the sea
To the swift, clean things that brave and dare
Forest and peak and prairie free,
A cage to craze and stifle and stun
And a fat man feeding a penny bun
And a she-one giggling, "Ain't it grand!"
As she drags a dirty-nosed brat by the hand.

[Footnote 1: Central Park, filthiest, cruellest and most outrageous of
zoological exhibitions.]

PREFACE

On a beautiful day in spring as I was running as hard as I could run
pursued by the New York police and a number of excited citizens, my mind,
which becomes brilliantly active under physical exhilaration, began to
work busily.

I thought about all sorts of things: I thought about hard times and
financial depression and about our great President who is in a class
all alone with himself and soon to become extinct; I thought about
art and why there isn't any when it's talked about; I thought of
macro-lepidoptera, of metagrammatism, monoliths, manicures, and monsoons.

And all the time I was running as fast as I could run; and the faster I
ran the more things I thought about until my terrific pace set my brain
whizzing like a wheel.

I felt no remorse at having published these memoirs of my life--which was
why the police and populace were pursuing me, maddened to frenzy by the
fearless revelation of mighty scientific truths in this little volume you
are about to attempt to read. _Ubicumque ars ostentatur, veritas abesse
videtur!_

I thought about it clearly, calmly, concisely as I fled. The maddened
shouts of the prejudiced populace did not disturb me. Around and around
the Metropolitan Museum of Art I ran; the inmates of that institution
came out to watch me and they knew at a glance that I was one of them for
they set up a clamor like a bunch of decoy ducks when one of their wild
comrades comes whirling by.

"Police! Police!" they shouted; but I went careering on u