The whole Anderson shows himself in these remarks. With what glee he lived in dreamland! Was not he himself that shy and frightened youth whom he describes as stalking through the streets of his native village with his eyes downcast as if he lived in another world? In a world deliberately made ugly by utilitarianism, among people who think of nothing but of getting rich quick, Anderson cast his lot with the proletarians. The only beings for whom he shows any tender feelings are the small craftsmen--now a vanishing caste--who used to be possessed with a sensuous passion for fine surfaces and beautiful materials. Without this craving for work beautifully done he sees no possible civilization. Alas! the sense of beauty is gone. Comfort and speed have replaced refinement and art: Speed, hurried workmanship, cheap automobiles for cheap men, cheap chairs in cheap houses, city apartment houses with shining bathroom floors, the Ford, the Twentieth Century Limited, the World War, the jazz, the movies. The modern American youth is going forth to walk at evening in the midst of these. New and more terrible nerve tension, speed. Something vibrant in the air about us all. How is it possible to preserve a sense of the beautiful in a world such as this? We might still find a new interest in life by learning how to feel the beautiful finish of a perfect surface, a sensation which used to bring an æsthetic emotion to the tip of the craftsman’s fingers. Why not heed John Ruskin’s and William Morris’ advice and, through the superficial amusements of our modern civilization, revive for the arts and crafts a passion, since they have been the foundation of civilization? To love, to feel, to dream! That is the question. How joyfully Anderson surrenders himself to fancy! And what a world that fanciful one--how grotesque, how strange, how teeming with strange life! Could one ever bring order into that world?... There are so many people in that land of whom I should like to tell you. I should like to take you with me through the gate into the land, let you wander there with me. There are people there with whom I should like you to talk. There is the old woman accompanied by the gigantic dogs who died alone in a wood on a winter day,[39] the stout man with the gray eyes and with the pack on his back, who stands talking to the beautiful woman as she sits in her carriage, the little dark woman with the boyish husband who lives in a small frame house by a dusty road far out, in the country. Such was the world to which his imagination gave life, a fictitious world, of course, but in which art, allied to sympathetic intuition is rendered beautiful enough to make one wish that it were real. _Kennst du das Land...?_ And how can we call a writer with this trend of mind a realist? For him only that is real which has been first imagined.