Let us not forget Anderson’s escape. There will be many similar flights in his books. The unpardonable sin, according to the novelist, is automatism, petrification on the surface, routine. He insists on an incessant renewal of life, on change and migration as the essential condition of moral progress. “Leave all and follow me!” says the Voice which all his heroes obey. * * * * * One day Anderson found himself free at last, free to seek Truth. His literary début dates from his arrival in Chicago in 1910. Since the World Exposition of 1892, the metropolis of the Middle West had become a first-rate artistic and literary center. Anderson found friends, advisers and critics there. In contact with the young writers, especially Theodore Dreiser, he became self-conscious as an artist. I shall not go into detail of his works, or what he is pleased to call his “scribblings” at this period. He found in Chicago materials for verse and prose, and he began to write short stories and novels. “Windy McPherson’s Son” appeared in 1916, not without some misfortunes of its own. The critics were unfair to the book. According to the author himself it was full of reminiscences of Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, Jack London and Zola. But the real Sherwood Anderson was there too. It was invaluable as a piece of autobiography. It tells the pathetic story of an ill-born youth who is forced to inhibit the best part of himself. A deep and, at times, lyrical feeling for human miseries pervaded the novel. It heralded the advent of an American Dostoievski. The sad idyll of Sam and Mary Underwood, the gloomy atmosphere and the semi-consciousness through which the protagonists of this book move and seek themselves, foreshadow his novels of a later date. At the end of the story, Sam McPherson withdraws himself from the world, he becomes converted and makes up his mind to seek Truth and not earthly ambitions. Sam was born of poor parents and had to rise painfully by his own means.[42]