It cannot be I am in the presence of the Virgin. Americans do not believe in either Virgins or Venuses. Americans believe in themselves. There is no need of gods now but if the need arises Americans will manufacture many millions of them, all alike. They will label them “Keep smiling” or “Safety first” and go on their way, and as for the woman, the Virgin, she is the enemy of our race. Her purpose is not our purpose. Away with her! The beam of wood I see is just a beam of wood. It was cut in a forest and brought to the factory to support a wall that had begun to give way. No one touched it with careless hurried hands and so it aged as you see, quite beautifully--as trees themselves age. All about me are broken wheels. In the factory the great steam-driven wheels are forever still now. Broken dreams, ends of thoughts, a stifled feeling within my chest. Aha, you Stephenson, Franklin, Fulton, Bell, Edison--you heroes of my Industrial Age, you men who have been the gods of the men of my day--is your day over so soon? “In the end,” I am telling myself, “all of your triumphs come to the dull and meaningless absurdity, of say a clothespin factory. There have been sweeter men in old times, half forgotten now, who will be remembered after you are forgotten. The Virgin too, will be remembered after you are forgotten. Would it not be amusing if Chartres continued to stand after you are forgotten?” Is it not absurd? Because I do not want to work in a warehouse and roll kegs, because I do not want to work in a factory anywhere I must needs go getting gaudy and magnificent and try to blow all factories away with a breath of my fancy. My fancy climbs up and up. Democracy shall spread itself out thinner and thinner, it shall come to nothing but empty mouthings in the end. Everywhere, all over the earth, shall be the dreary commercial and material success of, say the later Byzantine Empire. In the West and after the great dukes, the kings and the popes, the commoners--who were not commoners after all but only stole the name--are having their day. The shrewd little money-getters with the cry “democracy” on their lips shall rule for a time and then the real commoners shall come--and that shall be the worst time of all. Oh, the futile little vanity of the workers who have forgotten the cunning of hands, who have long let machines take the place of the cunning of hands! And the tired men of the arts. Oh, the cunning smart little men of the arts of New York and Chicago! Painters making advertising designs for soap, painters making portraits of bankers’ wives, story-tellers striving wearily to “make” the _Saturday Evening Post_ or to be revolutionists in the arts. Artists everywhere striving for what? Respectability perhaps--to call attention to themselves perhaps.