Personal Publicity Is Apt To Be Dangerous

Men Had Reached Into The Scrub And Along Its Boundaries, Had Snatched What They Could Get And Had Gone Away, Uneasy In That Vast Indifferent Peace; For A Man Was Nothing, Crawling Ant-like Among The Myrtle Bushes Under The Pines. Now They Were Gone, It Was As Though They Had Never Been. The Silence Of The Scrub Was Primordial. The Wood-thrush Crying Across It Might Have Been The First Bird In The World-or The Last.

Readers Themselves, I Think, Contribute To A Book. They Add Their Own Imaginations, And It Is As Though The Writer Only Gave Them Something To Work On, And They Did The Rest.

Now, Having Left Cities Behind Me, Turned Away Forever From The Strange, Gregarious Huddling Of Men By Stones, I Find Those Various Great Towns I Knew Fused Into One, Burned Together In The Fire Of My Despising.

A Dead Tree, Falling, Made Less Havoc Than A Live One. It Seemed As Though A Live Tree Went Down Fighting, Like An Animal.

The Individual Man Is Transitory, But The Pulse Of Life And Of Growth Goes On After He Is Gone, Buried Under A Wreath Of Magnolia Leaves.