xandrian ball-rooms to Nitrian deserts.
The emptiness of it--the eternal simper, the godless and harrowing
routine! If a man has brains or a soul about him, what can he do with
them in such a crowd? Better leave them at home with his pocket-book, or
he might lose them--less suddenly, but more certainly, I fancy. No, the
clubs are not much better; I don't care for horse-talk or the price of
shares. See human nature? not in its best clothes--and you may read that
remark either way you like. Why man, you can get all this in _Punch_ and
the novels, with far less fatigue, and lay them down when you have had
enough. An hour on Broadway sickens me for the wild-flowers, the
brooks, the free breeze or the mountain side."

He was getting violent now, and I thought I had better calm him down.
"Oho! the rhyme and reason of a rural life, is it? Soothing effect of
Nature on a world-worn bosom, and all that? So you do believe in
something, after all?"

"I told you it was but a choice of evils, and this is the less. Nature
has neither heart nor conscience, and she sets us a bad example. She has
no continuity, no reliableness, no self-control. I can see none of the
fabled sublimity in a storm; only the pettishness of a spoiled child, or
of an angry man bent on breaking things. The sunset is better to look
at, but it has no more moral meaning than a peep-show. Yet this is a
return to primitive conditions, in a way. I can throw off here the
peddler's pack of artificialities that Vanity Fair imposes, and carry
only the inevitable burden of manhood. The air is less poisonous to body
and mind than in the cities. The groves were God's first temples, and
may be the last."

"See here, Hartman. Suppose people in general were to take up with these
cheerful notions of yours, and go away from each other and out in the
backwoods--what then?"

"It might be the best thing they could do. But don't be alarmed, Bob: I
am not a Nihilist agent. Preserve your faith in the Oil Exchange and the
general order. I speak only for myself, and I'm not proselyting to any
great extent. We'll have a week's fishing, and then I'll send you back
to your wife in good shape. Or if you find yourself getting demoralized,
you can skip earlier, either home or to a place further up that I'll
tell you of, where the few inhabitants are as harmless as your youngest
baby."

But I was not to be bluffed off in this way. "Jim," I said, "there is
something behind all this. Was it