He tore himself away from his early environment. He got into the good graces of a wealthy manufacturer in Chicago. Upon getting rich, he married his employer’s daughter. The plot is developed through episodes which would seem incredible had we not read similar ones in Upton Sinclair and Theodore Dreiser. Sam begins as a superman, _à la_ Frank Cowperwood, which means that all the roads to success seem fair ones to him. He is at first a conscienceless “bounder,” to use Anderson’s own phraseology. He does not believe in the sweet and Christian ethics of failure. Then suddenly, at the end, he drops everything to become a socialist. Up to this point this story reads very much like a book by Upton Sinclair. But Anderson is more of a mystic than of a socialist. He does not much trust the proletariat helping moral progress. Sam is converted. He redeems himself, not by following the path of social justice but that of Love and Pity. The book is particularly interesting from the angle of psychoanalysis. It discusses a case of the dissociation and reunification of the self, a problem which was soon to become an obsession with the author. The whole story is based upon Sam McPherson’s efforts to disentangle his true “personality picture” from his adventures. Later on Anderson refuses to help his characters out of the depths of the subconscious. He lets them flounder in the darkness of their conscience. But he had not reached that stage yet, at the time of which I am now speaking. Then he did not neglect to answer the S.O.S. of his characters in distress. Here is the portrait of Sam McPherson as a representative American: Sam McPherson is a living American. He is a rich man, but his money, that he spent so many years and so much of his energy acquiring, does not mean much to him. What is true of him is true of more wealthy Americans than is commonly believed. Something has happened to him that has happened to the others also, to how many of the others? Men of courage, with strong bodies and quick brains, men who have come of a strong race, have taken up what they had thought to be the banner of life and carried it forward. Growing weary, they have stopped in a road that climbs a long hill and have leaned the banner against a tree. Tight brains have loosened a little. Strong convictions have become weak. Old gods are dying. “_It is only when you are torn from your mooring and drift like a rudderless ship that I am able to come near you._” The banner has been carried forward by a strong, daring man, filled with determination. What is inscribed on it?