America. It was interpreted as a transcript of the state of mind of men and women here and elsewhere. You called it a Comedy Humaine in your announcement of my identity as the author in the Mirror of November 20, 1914. If the epitaphic form gave added novelty I must confess that the idea was suggested to me by the Greek Anthology. But it was rather because of the Greek Anthology than from it that I evolved the less harmonious epitaphs with which Spoon River Anthology was commenced. As to metrical epitaphs it is needless to say that I drew upon the legitimate materials of authentic English versification. Up to the Spring of 1914, I had never allowed a Spring to pass without reading Homer; and I feel that this familiarity had its influence both as to form and spirit; but I shall not take the space now to pursue this line of confessional.     

       What is the substance of which I have spoken if it be not the life around us as we view it through eyes whose vision lies in heredity, mode of life, understanding of ourselves and of our place and time? You have lived much. As a critic and a student of the country no one understands America better than you do. As a denizen of the west, but as a surveyor of the east and west you have brought to the country's interpretation a knowledge of its political and literary life as well as a proficiency in the history of other lands and other times. You have seen and watched the unfolding of forces that sprang up after the Civil War. Those forces mounted in the eighties and exploded in free silver in 1896. They began to hit through the directed marksmanship of Theodore Roosevelt during his second term. You knew at first hand all that went with these forces of human hope, futile or valiant endeavor, articulate or inarticulate expression of the new birth. You saw and lived, but in greater degree, what I have seen and lived. And with this back-ground you inspired and instructed me in my analysis. Standing by you confirmed or corrected my sculpturing of the clay taken out of the soil from which we both came. You did this with an eye familiar with the secrets of the last twenty years, familiar also with the relation of those years to the time which preceded and bore them.     

       So it is, that not only because I could not dedicate Spoon River to you, but for the larger reasons indicated, am I impelled to do you whatever honor there may be in taking your name for this book. By this outline confession, sometime perhaps to be 

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