No--it was wonderful to ride across this country and see all the people. The train moving along seemed to make something move in me. I had thoughts not like any thoughts I’d ever had before--your words like a spring breaking through the dry country of my mind. I thought of how you call your paper “A Journal of The Social Revolution,” and I said to myself--This is the Social Revolution! Knowing that your tombstone doesn’t matter! _Seeing_--that’s the Social Revolution. ED Seeing--? THE WOMAN [_As if it is passing before her._] A plain, dark trees off at the edge, against the trees a little house and a big barn. A flat piece of land fenced in. Stubble, furrows. Horses waiting to get in at the barn; cows standing around a pump. A tile yard, a water tank, one straight street of a little town. The country so still it seems dead. The trees like--hopes that have been given up. The grave yards--on hills--they come so fast. I noticed them first because of my tombstone, but I got to thinking about the people--the people who spent their whole lives right near the places where they are now. There’s something in the thought of them--like the cows standing around the pump. So still, so patient, it--kind of hurts. And their pleasures:--a flat field fenced in. Your great words carried me to other great words. I thought of Lincoln, and what he said of a few of the dead. I said it over and over. I said things and didn’t know the meaning of them ’till after I had said them. I said--“The truth--the truth--the truth that opens from our lives as water opens from the rocks.” Then I knew what that truth was. [_Pause, with an intensity peculiarly simple._] “Let us here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.” I mean--all of them. [_A gesture, wide, loving._] Let life become what it may become!--so beautiful that everything that is back of us is worth everything it cost. [_Enter TOM._ TOM I’ve got--[_Feeling something unusual._] Sorry to butt in, but I can still get that job on _The Evening World_. If this paper is going to stop, I’ve got to know it. ED Stop! This paper can’t stop! TOM Can’t stop! Last I heard, it couldn’t do anything else. ED That was--long ago. TOM Oh--you’ve got something to go on with? ED Yes, something to go on with. TOM I see. [_Looks at woman, as if he doesn’t see, glances at her suit-case._] I’m glad. But--I’ve got to be sure. This--is the truth? ED The truth. The truth that opens from our lives as water opens from the rocks. [_TOM backs up._ THE WOMAN [_Turning a shining face to THE PRINTER._] Nobody really _needs_ a tombstone! (CURTAIN) * * * * * CLOSE THE BOOK A COMEDY IN ONE ACT * * * * * First Performed by the Provincetown Players, New York, Nov. 2, 1917 ORIGINAL CAST