There is a revolt and a quickening sense of changes and forces in the air. The work of any individual writer or worker can effect little or nothing. But the earnest enthusiasm of a little band of men and women, inspired with a belief in the impartiality of the good God and the perpetual renewal of imagination and thought and genius in every branch of the race, can set such an enthusiasm for better things and higher ideals in not merely the substance but the spirit of all our art endeavor as shall bring in a harvest of real, robust literature from every quarter of this country--largely from the most unsuspected quarters. It is this scattered interest in a nobler ideal than obtains in our contemporary periodical literature that the FLY LEAF will attempt to focus. At present nearly all the writers with any individual style and force and robustness and largeness of aim are shut out of American periodical literature, because such qualities in literature are deemed _too shocking_ nowadays. The FLY LEAF believes there are still readers who appreciate boldness, original conceptions, audacity of treatment, and the varied play of fancy over the whole and not merely a part of human existence. These are the qualities that gave us our standard English literature, and in the early days inspired our greatest writers in America. They must be the impulse and inspiration of today, if Americans are not content to be represented in literature by snobbish boys trying to write like “ladies,” and women who write without effort like the deuce knows what.