Big, And brutal, And hateful.... I shivered in his grasp. Hair bristled on his great paws, Oaths stammered to his lips, Rage clouded his huge red face, And I was afraid.... Fear is a hell of a thing For a man to feel.... But when I looked And saw his eyes, Dropping before my steady gaze, And marked his mouth agape, Inarticulate, I laughed.... Fear is a hell of a thing For a man to feel Toward an ox. Hate I shall destroy my prisons. Not because I hate them For from them has come to me A brighter shaft From Freedom’s pharos-tower. But yet I shall destroy my prisons Because they are false idols Worshipped by lovers of hate.... To these My scorn shall be a scourge, My most tender thought a scorpion. And the fire of my hate Shall consume their concepts. To Our Readers Will you make _The Little Review_ a Christmas present by renewing your subscription if it has run out? We will value it more than having our stocking filled with gold. It will make the December issue possible for us and will insure your having the magazine during the year when it is to become really good. We couldn’t have an October issue, owing to our usual embarrassment about funds; so this will have to serve as a sort of October-November, though I can’t put that on the cover because they tell me it would violate some new law. We are back in Chicago where we shall stay for a month before moving to New York. Word comes from every part of the country that young magazines are dying, and that even _The Masses_ may have to succumb before the increasing cost of paper, etc. That _must_ not be! _The Masses_ is too valuable to lose and everybody must do something about it. As for _The Little Review_, we may have to come out on tissue paper pretty soon, but we shall _keep on coming out_! Nothing can stop us now. I feel as though we have an entirely new lease on life and were just starting with what we have to say. The Reader Critic For So Much Imagination, Our Thanks [The following letter was written in the thirteen blank pages of the September issue. If the understanding in it were divided among two or three million people the ways of editors would not be so difficult in a prosaic and literal world.] _Roy George, San Francisco_: I said you couldn’t be as valiant as you looked, but you are. Nobody thought you’d do it. And then my blood screams through that “must say it” stuff. It’s violent and it’s dear. Did you call for art or artillery?