The writer has found the strenuous life to be as depressing and dwarfing as prison life itself; and so he has fallen back to the habit of dreaming, and singing, and taking things easy, even in restless and dreamless America. This sounds paradoxical; it is like going from the country of Trusts and Equality to establish a trolley-car system in the Lebanons. Even this might be possible fifty years hence, despite the opposition of those ancient hills. The writer has forsaken their cedars and pines, their vineyards and fig groves to walk in the shadows of sky-scrapers and watch the sun rise languidly from behind a mound of bricks or a smoking chimney, and sink a-blushing behind the grimy walls of gaseous Communipaw.
"So fair a sun
Setting over so foul a town!"
one would exclaim; but nature delights in paradoxes, and freaks, and rococo. These songs, dear reader, might not even deserve to be classified with like phenomena; but, as the sincere expression of a soul just emerging from the abyss, they deserve to stand. If, however, thou thinkest them no worse in spirit and merit than the amyelencephalic discourses of a pundit, or the emetic dissertations of a Zamackshary, then remember as thou settest the book aside that the author does not appeal to your charity, nor to your justice. Thou art the host, gentle reader; and he relies on the hospitality and cordiality due a guest.
