Let me exaggerate! For in exaggeration there is life and the punch that
makes for progress. Whereas no man can manifestly qualify as a live wire
who sees things as they are.
Let me exaggerate the number of millions of bacteria to the cubic
centimetre in our morning milk; and the hosts of virulent bacilli that
make their encampment on the unlaundered dollar-bill; and the
anti-social micro-organisms that beset the common drinking-cup.
Let me exaggerate the virtue of assiduously and courageously swatting
the common house-fly.
Let me exaggerate the grey and monotonous life of the poor, forgetting
the children who dance to the sound of the hurdy-gurdy; and the mothers
who smile over their babies in tenement cradles, and the lovers in the
parks, and the May parties, and the millions who patronise the
moving-picture theatres, and the millions in Coney Island.
Let me exaggerate the grinding, crushing, withering speed of modern
industry, forgetting the hundreds of thousands who throng the baseball
parks and the additional millions who study the score boards on Park
Row.
Let me exaggerate the number of children who go breakfastless to school,
since nothing less than 25,000 gets into the newspaper headlines; and
the wickedness of regularly ordained clergymen who marry people without
asking for a physician's certificate; and the peril of helping an old
lady up the Subway steps lest she turn out to be a recruiter of white
slaves.
Let me exaggerate the blessings of an age when babies shall be born
without adenoids and tonsils, and shall develop just as automatically
into clear-eyed little Boy Scouts and Camp-fire Girls.
Let me exaggerate! Teach me that outlook upon life which the highbrow
pragmatists describe as the will to believe, and the low-brow describes
as pipe dreams! Save me from those twin devils, the Sense of Humour and
the Sense of Proportion; for in common sense is stagnation and death,
but progress lies in exaggeration!