I had been coming to New Hampshire mountains. And here I am and what am I to say? Here first my theme becomes embarrassing. Emerson said, “The God who made New Hampshire Taunted the lofty land with little men.” Another Massachusetts poet said, “I go no more to summer in New Hampshire. I’ve given up my summer place in Dublin.” But when I asked to know what ailed New Hampshire, She said she couldn’t stand the people in it, The little men (it’s Massachusetts speaking). And when I asked to know what ailed the people, She said, “Go read your own books and find out.” I may as well confess myself the author Of several books against the world in general. To take them as against a special state Or even nation’s to restrict my meaning. I’m what is called a sensibilitist, Or otherwise an environmentalist. I refuse to adapt myself a mite To any change from hot to cold, from wet To dry, from poor to rich, or back again. I make a virtue of my suffering From nearly everything that goes on round me.[10] In other words, I know wherever I am, Being the creature of literature I am, I shall not lack for pain to keep me awake. Kit Marlowe taught me how to say my prayers: “Why this is Hell, nor am I out of it.” Samoa, Russia, Ireland I complain of, No less than England, France and Italy. Because I wrote my novels in New Hampshire Is no proof that I aimed them at New Hampshire. When I left Massachusetts years ago Between two days, the reason why I sought New Hampshire, not Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, or Vermont was this: Where I was living then, New Hampshire offered The nearest boundary to escape across. I hadn’t an illusion in my hand-bag About the people being better there Than those I left behind. I thought they weren’t. I thought they couldn’t be. And yet they were. I’d sure had no such friends in Massachusetts As Hall of Windham, Gay of Atkinson,[11] Bartlett of Raymond (now of Colorado), Harris of Derry, and Lynch of Bethlehem. The glorious bards of Massachusetts seem To want to make New Hampshire people over. They taunt the lofty land with little men. I don’t know what to say about the people. For art’s sake one could almost wish them worse[12] Rather than better. How are we to write The Russian novel in America As long as life goes so unterribly? There is the pinch from which our only outcry In literature to date is heard to come. We get what little misery we can Out of not having cause for misery. It makes the guild of novel writers sick To be expected to be Dostoievskis On nothing worse than too much luck and comfort. This is not sorrow, though; it’s just the vapors, And recognized as such in Russia itself Under the new régime, and so forbidden. If well it is with Russia, then feel free To say so or be stood against the wall And shot. It’s Pollyanna now or death. This, then, is the new freedom we hear tell of;