O friend! I know not which way I must look For comfort, being, as I am, opprest To think that now our life is only drest For show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook, Or groom!--We must run glittering like a brook In the open sunshine, or we are unblest; The wealthiest man among us is the best; No grandeur now in nature or in book Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more: The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence, And pure religion breathing household laws. The Preface to "Les Miserables" BY VICTOR HUGO (The poet and humanitarian of France, 1802-1885, has in this passage set forth the purpose of one of the half-dozen greatest novels of the world) So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age--the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night--are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless. Bound BY MAY BEALS (Contemporary American writer and lecturer) Sometimes I feel the tide of life in me Flood upward, high and higher, till I stand Tiptoe, aflame with energy, a god, Young, virile, glorying in my youth and power. But not for long; the grip of poverty Seizes me, sets my daily task; the eyes Of those I love, looking to me for bread Pierce me like eagles' beaks through very love. I am Prometheus bound; these cares and fears Tear at my vitals, leave me broken, spent. And unavailingly 'tis spent, my life, My wondrous life, so pregnant with rich powers. That stuff in me from which heroic deeds, Great thoughts and noble poems might be made Is wrenched from me, is coined in wealth, and spent By others; save that I and mine receive A mere existence, bare of hope and joy, Bare even of comfort. Comrades, stretched and bound In agony on labor's rock, we live-- And die--to fatten vultures! To a Foil'd European Revolutionaire BY WALT WHITMAN (America's most original and creative poet, 1819-1892; printer and journalist, during the war an army nurse, and later a government clerk, discharged for publishing what his superiors considered an "indecent" book)