It may be that my eyes are blind and that I cannot see.
It may be I am deaf.
My hands are nervous and tremble. How much do they tremble? Now, alas, I am absorbed in looking at my own hands.
With these nervous and uncertain hands may I really feel for the form of things concealed in the darkness?
DREISER
Heavy, heavy, hangs over thy head,
Fine, or superfine?
Theodore Dreiser is old—he is very, very old. I do not know how many years he has lived, perhaps forty, perhaps fifty, but he is very old. Something grey and bleak and hurtful, that has been in the world perhaps forever, is personified in him.
When Dreiser is gone men shall write books, many of them, and in the books they shall write there will be so many of the qualities Dreiser lacks. The new, the younger men shall have a sense of humor, and everyone knows Dreiser has no sense of humor. More than that, American prose writers shall have grace, lightness of touch, a dream of beauty breaking through the husks of life.