THERE are one hundred new poets in the villages of the land. This Handy
Guide is dedicated first of all _to them_.
It is also dedicated to the younger sons of the wide earth, to the
runaway boys and girls getting further from home every hour, to the
prodigals who are still wasting their substance in riotous living, be
they gamblers or blasphemers or plain drunks; to those heretics of
whatever school to whom life is a rebellion with banners; to those who
are willing to accept counsel if it be mad counsel.
This book is also dedicated to those budding philosophers who realize
that every creature is a beggar in the presence of the beneficent sun,
to those righteous ones who know that all righteousness is as filthy
rags.
Moreover, as an act of contrition, reënlistment and fellowship this
book is dedicated to all the children of Don Quixote who see giants
where most folks see windmills: those Galahads dear to Christ and
those virgin sisters of Joan of Arc who serve the lepers on their
knees and march in shabby armor against the proud, who look into the
lightning with the eyes of the mountain cat. They do more soldierly
things every day than this book records, yet they are mine own people,
my nobler kin to whom I have been recreant, and so I finally dedicate
this book _to them_.