re better than his life. Better the woman's
goal, sex and death, than some _false_ goal of man's.

Better Anna Karenina and Vronsky a thousand times than Natasha and
that porpoise of a Pierre. This pretty, slightly sordid couple tried
so hard to kid themselves that the porpoise Pierre was puffing with
great purpose. Better Vronsky than Tolstoi himself, in my mind. Better
Vronsky's final statement: "As a soldier I am still some good. As a
man I am a ruin"--better that than Tolstoi and Tolstoi-ism and that
beastly peasant blouse the old man wore.

Better passion and death than any more of these "isms." No more of the
old purpose done up in aspic. Better passion and death.

But still--we _might_ live, mightn't we?

For heaven's sake answer plainly "No," if you feel like it. No good
temporizing.

EPILOGUE

"_Tutti i salmi finiscono in gloria._"

All the psalms wind up with the Gloria.--"As it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be, World without end. Amen."

Well, then, Amen.

I hope you say Amen! along with me, dear little reader: if there be
any dear little reader who has got so far. If not, I say Amen! all by
myself.--But don't you think the show is all over. I've got another
volume up my sleeve, and after a year or two years, when I have shaken
it down my sleeve, I shall bring it and lay it at the foot of your
Liberty statue, oh Columbia, as I do this one.

I suppose Columbia means the States.--"Hail Columbia!"--I suppose,
etymologically, it is a nest of turtle-doves, Lat. _columba_, a dove.
Coo me softly, then, Columbia; don't roar me like the sucking doves of
the critics of my "Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious."

And when I lay this little book at the foot of the Liberty statue,
that brawny lady is not to look down her nose and bawl: "Do you see
any green in my eye?" Of course I don't, dear lady. I only see the
reflection of that torch--or is it a carrot?--which you are holding up
to light the way into New York harbor. Well, many an ass has strayed
across the uneasy paddock of the Atlantic, to nibble your carrot, dear
lady. And I must say, you can keep on slicing off nice little
carrot-slices of guineas and doubloons for an extraordinarily
inexhaustible long time. And innumerable asses can collect themselves
nice little heaps of golden carrot-slices, and then lift up their
heads and brag over them with fairly pan-demoniac yells of
gratification. Of course I don't see any green in your