telephones and newspapers now, and it has railroads; and if a man
proposes to do a certain thing in it, the telephones tell the few, and
the newspapers tell the crowd, and the crowd gets on to the railroad;
and before he rises from his sleep, behold the crowd in his front yard;
and if he can get as far as his own front gate in the thing he is going
for, he must be--either a statesman? a hero? or a great genius? None of
these. Let him be a corporation--of ideas or of dollars; let him be some
complex, solid, crowded thing, would he do anything for himself, or for
anybody else, or for everybody else, in a world too crowded to tell the
truth without breaking something, or to find room for it, when it is
told, without breaking something.

This is the Crowd's World.

* * * * *

What I have written I have written.

I have been sitting and reading it. It is a mood. But there is an
implacable truth in it, I believe, that must be gotten out and used.

As I have been reading I have looked up. I see the quiet little mountain
through my window standing out there in the sun. It looks around the
world as if nothing had happened; and the bobolinks out in the great
meadow are all flying and singing in the same breath and rowing through
the air, thousands of them, miles of them. They do not stop a minute.

A moment ago while I was writing I heard the Child outside on the
piazza, four years old, going by my window back and forth, listening to
the crunch of her new shoes as if it were the music of the spheres. Why