You have lived much. As a critic and a student of the country no one
understands America better than you do. As a denizen of the west, but
as a surveyor of the east and west you have brought to the country's
interpretation a knowledge of its political and literary life as well
as a proficiency in the history of other lands and other times. You
have seen and watched the unfolding of forces that sprang up after the
Civil War. Those forces mounted in the eighties and exploded in free
silver in 1896. They began to hit through the directed marksmanship of
Theodore Roosevelt during his second term. You knew at first hand all
that went with these forces of human hope, futile or valiant endeavor,
articulate or inarticulate expression of the new birth. You saw and
lived, but in greater degree, what I have seen and lived. And with
this back-ground you inspired and instructed me in my analysis.
Standing by you confirmed or corrected my sculpturing of the clay
taken out of the soil from which we both came. You did this with an
eye familiar with the secrets of the last twenty years, familiar also
with the relation of those years to the time which preceded and bore
them.

So it is, that not only because I could not dedicate Spoon River to
you, but for the larger reasons indicated, am I impelled to do you
whatever honor there may be in taking your name for this book. By this
outline confession, sometime perhaps to be filled in, do I make known
what your relation is to these interpretations of mine resulting from
a spirit, life, thought, environment which have similarly come to us
and have similarly affected us.

I call this book "Toward the Gulf," a title importing a continuation
of the attempts of Spoon River and The Great Valley to mirror the age
and the country in which we live. It does not matter which one of