I haven't told why I wrote the book, but I haven't told you why I sneeze, either. A book is a sneeze. - E.B. White

A book is a sneeze.

Humor plays close to the big hot fire which is Truth, and sometimes the reader feels the heat.

This is the real thing. This is bedlam in bed. As Mr. Stevenson puts it: “. . . no civilization has ever had so haunting a sense of an ultimate order of goodness and rationality which can be known and achieved.” It makes me eager to rise and meet the new day, as Fred used to rise to his, with the complete conviction that through vigilance and good works all porcupines, all cats, all skunks, all squirrels, all houseflies, all footballs, all evil birds in the sky could be successfully brought to account and the scene made safe and pleasant for the sensible individual — namely, him. However distorted was his crazy vision of the beautiful world, however perverse his scheme for establishing an order of goodness by murdering every creature that seemed to him bad, I had to hand him this: he really worked at it.

new york provides not only a continuing excitation but also a spectacle that is continuing.