The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Quest of the Simple Life, by William J.
Dawson

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Title: The Quest of the Simple Life

Author: William J. Dawson

Release Date: December 6, 2005 [eBook #17246]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUEST OF THE SIMPLE LIFE***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE QUEST OF THE SIMPLE LIFE

by

W. J. DAWSON

New York
E. P. Dutton and Co.
31 West Twenty-Third Street
1907
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty

Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnim.
VIRG., Ecl. viii., l. 72.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE

CHAPTER II

GETTING THE BEST OUT OF LIFE

CHAPTER III

GETTING A LIVING, AND LIVING

CHAPTER IV

EARTH-HUNGER

CHAPTER V

HEALTH AND ECONOMICS

CHAPTER VI

IN SEARCH OF THE PICTURESQUE

CHAPTER VII

I FIND MY COTTAGE

CHAPTER VIII

BUYING HAPPINESS

CHAPTER IX

HOW WE LIVED

CHAPTER X

NEIGHBOURSHIP

CHAPTER XI

THE WOUNDS OF A FRIEND

CHAPTER XII

AM I RIGHT?

CHAPTER XIII

THE CITY OF THE FUTURE

CHAPTER I

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE

For a considerable number of years I had been a resident in London,
which city I regarded alternately as my Paradise and my House of
Bondage. I am by no means one of those who are always ready to fling
opprobrious epithets at London, such as 'a pestilent wen,' a cluster of
'squalid villages,' and the like; on the contrary, I regard London as
the most fascinating of all cities, with the one exception of that city
of Eternal Memories beside the Tiber. But even Horace loved the
olive-groves of Tivoli more than the far-ranged splendours of the
Palatine; and I may be pardoned if an occasional vision of green fields
often left my eye insensitive to metropolitan attractions.

This is a somewhat sonorous preface to the small matter of my story;
but I am anxious to elaborate it a little, lest it should be imagined
that I am merely a person of bucolic mind, to whom all cities or large
congregations of my fellow-men are in themselves abhorrent. On the
cont