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