re of all sorts of exercising
apparatus and health-foods....

And so the world would be leavened with the new idea ... and men and
women and little children would wander forth from the great, unclean,
insanitary cities and live in clusters of pretty cottages ... naked, in
good weather,--in bad, clothed for warmth and comfort, but not for
shame. And the human body would become holy.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the petty, local fight had started which was to disrupt this
hope of Barton's, and thwart its fulfillment forever.

The town of Andersonville became jealous of the town of Cottswold
because the latter handled most of the mail of our city and thereby had
achieved the position of third or fourth class postoffice--I don't know
exactly which.

The struggle commenced when the two lone policemen of Andersonville
began to arrest us--men and women--when we walked into their town for
provisions, clad in our bathing suits ... later on, we were forbidden to
run for exercise, in our bathing suits, on the fine, macadamised road
that passed not far from our dwellings ... it shocked the motorists.

Yet people came from far and near, just to be shocked. That seems to be
the chief, most delightful, and only lawfully indulged emotion of the
Puritan.

Barton summoned us to a meeting, one night, and we held a long palaver
over the situation. We decided to become more cautious, in spite of a
few hotheads who advised defiance to the hilt....

And the beautiful girl that possessed such fine breasts could no longer
row about on our little lake, naked to the waist. And we were requested
to go far in among the trees for our nude sun-baths.

The more radical of us moved entirely into the woods, despite the sand
flies....

Then the affair simmered down to quietness--till the New York _World_
and the New York _Journal_ sent out their reporters.... After that, what
with the lurid and insinuating stories printed, the state authorities
began to look into the matter--and found no harm in us.

But the Andersonville officials were out for blood. Cottswold was
growing too fast for their injured civic pride and vanity.

"Can't you divide your mail between the two towns, and make them both
third or fourth class or whatever-it-is postoffice towns?" I asked
Barton, after he had given me the simple explanation of the whole
affair.

"No--for if I took anything away from Cottswold and added it to
Andersonville, then