A Good Soldier Is A Blind, Heartless,

Having No New Companions, Nothing Remained For Him But To Read.

A Vast Silence Reigned Over The Land. The Land Itself Was A Desolation, Lifeless, Without Movement, So Lone And Cold That The Spirit Of It Was Not Even That Of Sadness. There Was A Hint In It Of Laughter, But Of Laughter More Terrible Than Any Sadness-a Laughter That Was Mirthless As The Smile Of The Sphinx, A Laughter Cold As The Frost And Partaking Of The Grimness Of Infallibility. It Was The Masterful And Incommunicable Wisdom Of Eternity Laughing At The Futility Of Life And The Effort Of Life. It Was The Wild, The Savage, Frozen-hearted Northland Wild.

Thus It Was That In Obedience To The Law Laid Down By His Mother, And In Obedience To The Law Of That Unknown And Nameless Thing, Fear, He Kept Away From The Mouth Of The Cave.

[speaking To A Group Of Wealthy New Yorkers] A Million Years Ago, The Cave Man, Without Tools, With Small Brain, And With Nothing But The Strength Of His Body, Managed To Feed His Wife And Children, So That Through Him The Race Survived. You On The Other Hand, Armed With All The Modern Means Of Production, Multiplying The Productive Capacity Of The Cave Man A Million Times — You Are Incompetents And Muddlers, You Are Unable To Secure To Millions Even The Paltry Amount Of Bread That Would Sustain Their Physical Life. You Have Mismanaged The World, And It Shall Be Taken From You.

I Was Carrying A Beautiful Alcoholic Conflagration Around With Me. The Thing Fed On Its Own Heat And Flamed The Fiercer. There Was No Time, In All My Waking Time, That I Didn't Want A Drink. I Began To Anticipate The Completion Of My Daily Thousand Words By Taking A Drink When Only Five Hundred Words Were Written. It Was Not Long Until I Prefaced The Beginning Of The Thousand Words With A Drink.