ISBN-13: 9781535265577 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 62 str.
Excerpt: It would be difficult to find anything in the encyclopedia that would justify the claim that we are about to make, or anything in the dictionary. Even a poem--which is supposed to prove anything with a little of nothing--could hardly be found to prove it; but in this beginning hour of the twentieth century there are not a few of us--for the time at least allowed to exist upon the earth--who are obliged to say (with Luther), "Though every tile on the roundhouse be a devil, we cannot say otherwise--the locomotive is beautiful." As seen when one is looking at it as it is, and is not merely using it. As seen from a meadow. We had never thought to fall so low as this, or that the time would come when we would feel moved--all but compelled, in fact--to betray to a cold and discriminating world our poor, pitiful, one-adjective state. We do not know why a locomotive is beautiful. We are perfectly aware that it ought not to be. We have all but been ashamed of it for being beautiful--and of ourselves. We have attempted all possible words upon it--the most complimentary and worthy ones we know--words with the finer resonance in them, and the air of discrimination the soul loves.