Then I saw them going round the bend in the road
thirty years away.

I still want to be one of those boys.

And I am going to try. Perhaps, Heaven helping me, I will yet grow up to
them!

I know that the way those three boys felt about the fish--the way they
folded it around with something, the way they made the most of it, is
the way to feel about the world.

I side with the three boys. I am ready to admit that as regards
technical and comparatively unimportant details or as regards
perspective on the fish the boys may not have been right. It is possible
that they had not taken a point of view, measured in inches or volts or
foot-pounds, that was right and could last forever; but I know that the
spirit of their point of view was right--the spirit that hovered around
the three boys and around the fish that day was right and could last
forever.

It is the spirit in which the world was made, and the spirit in which
new worlds in all ages, and even before our eyes by Boys and Girls
and--God, are being made.

It is only the boys and the girls (all sizes) who know about worlds. And
it is only boys and girls who are right.

I heard a robin in the apple tree this morning out in the rain singing,
_"I believe! I believe!"_

* * * * *

At the same time, I am glad that I have known and faced, and that I
shall have to know and face, the Crowd Fear.

I know in some dogged, submerged, and speechless way that it is not a
true fear. And yet I want to move along the sheer edge of it all my
life. I want it. I want all men to have it, and to keep having it, and
to keep conquering it. I have seen that no man who has not felt it, who
does not know this huge numbing, numberless fear before the crowd, and
who may not know it again almost any moment, will ever be able to lead
the crowd, glory in it, die for it, or help it. Nor will any man who has
not defied it, and lifted his soul up naked and alone before it and
cried to God, ever interpret the crowd or express the will of the crowd,
or hew out of earth and heaven what the crowd wants.

We want to help to express and fulfil a crowd civilization, we want to
share the crowd life, to express what people in crowds feel--the great
crowd sensations, excitements, the inspirations and depressions of those
who live and struggle with crowds.

We want to face, and face grimly, implacably, the main facts, the main
emotions men are having to-day. And the mai