Artist's Announcement
IF the reader will pardon an unconventional obtrusion upon his attention for a brief moment, he may be interested to follow somewhat the train of thought in the artist's mind prior to his beginning to illustrate this book.
When "The Story of an Ostrich" was put into his hands, his first impression was, "Here is a merely juvenile theme, to be treated with light, conventional and ornamental drawings, as an adornment to a fairy tale."
As he read it, he gradually perceived a deeper significance concealed beneath the laugh that must inevitably be aroused at the thought of the ridiculous figure of the foolish ostrich pecking away at his homely feet, under the delusion that they are not his own.
The longer he studied and pondered over it, the more was he impressed with the conviction that underneath the simple phraseology of the poem, the author had conveyed a lesson that humanity might well pause and heed.... In these days of "making many books," how welcome should be that one whose story aims to raise the burden that weighs down the surcharged heart, or seeks to still the fever coursing through the blood of men and women struggling with the complicated problems of life!
"The Story of an Ostrich" is so simple in its form that children may read it with pleasure and profit, thereby drawing the simpler moral from the tale; while there is also suggested a possible condition of society that shall be attuned to the perfect chord of divine law, through the subordination of individualism in such manner as to produce complete harmony in all human affairs.
In the pride and dominance of the head over the rest of the body, in its scorn of the feet, equally indispensable with the head to the welfare of the whole, the poem has struck at the discordant note of all our human disaffection and rebellion.
When the artist had thus searched and found between the lines the real motive of the poem, it at once became pregnant with allusions and references that suggested artistic elaboration, or pen analysis, of the large area of social life, which the allegory, in its semi-humorous, satirical vein, assumes to cover.