but as I
would like to be. Out of chaos it struggles to you, and defeat--can you
not see it?--and if but the benediction of what I, or you, or any man
would like to be will come and rest on it, it is enough. Take it first
and last, it is written in every man's soul, be his theory whatsoever it
may of this great wondering world--wave after wave of it, shuddering and
glorying over him--it is written after all that he does not know that
anything is, can be, or has been in this world until he possesses it, or
misses possessing it himself--feels it slipping from him. It is in what
a man is, has, or might have, that he must track out his promise for a
world. His life is his prayer for the ages as long as he lives, and what
he is, and what he is trying to be, sings and prays for him, says masses
for his soul under the stars, and in the presence of all peoples, when
he is dead. By this truth, I and my book with you, Gentle Reader, must
stand or fall. Even now as I bend over the click of my typewriter, the
years rise dim and flow over me out of the east, ... generations of
brothers, out of the mist of heaven and out of the dust of the earth,
trooping across the world, and wondering at it, come and go, and out of
all these there shall not be one, no not one, Gentle Reader, but shall
be touched and loved by you, by me. In light out of shadow or in the
shadow out of the light, our souls fleck them, fleck them with the
invisible, blessing them and cursing them. We shall be the voices of the
night and day to them, shall live a shadow of life with them, and be the
sounds in their ears; did any man think that what we are, and what we
are trying to be, is ours, is private, is for ourselves? Boundlessly,
helplessly scattered on the world, upon the faces of our fellows, our
souls mock to us or sing to us forever.

So if I have opened my windows to you, say not it is because I have
dared. It is because I have not dared. I have said I will protect my
soul with the street. I will have my vow written on my forehead. I will
throw open my window to the passer-by. Fling it in! I beg you, oh world,
whatever it is, be it prayer or hope or jest. It is mine. I have vowed
to live with it, to live out of it--so long as I feel your footsteps
under my casement, and know that your watch is upon my days, and that
you hold me to myself. I have taken for my challenge or for my comrade,
I know not which, a whole world.

And what shall a man give in exchange