on, and
brought back to the good land all the sensitizing that the City had
given. There were days in which we were so happy--that another summer of
such life would have seemed too much to ask.

I had lived three weeks, when I remembered that formerly I read
newspapers, and opened the nearest. The mystery and foreignness of it
was as complete as the red fire of Antares that gleamed so balefully
every night across the Lake--a hell of trials and jealousy and suicide,
obscenity and passion. It all came up from the sheet to my nostrils like
the smell of blood.

* * * * *

... There are men and women in town who are dying for the country;
literally this is so, and such numbers of them that any one who lives
apart from the crowds and calls forth guests from time to time, can
find these sufferers among his little circle of friends. They come here
for week-ends and freshen up like newly watered plants--turning back
with set faces early Monday morning. I think of a flat of celery plants
that have grown to the end of the nourishment of their crowded space,
and begin to yellow and wither, sick of each other.... One does not say
what one thinks. It is not a simple thing for those whose life and work
is altogether identified with the crowded places, to uproot for roomy
planting in the country. But the fact remains, many are dying to be
free.

The City, intolerable as it is in itself--in its very nature against the
growth of the body and soul of man after a certain time--is nevertheless
the chief of those urging forces which shall bring us to simplicity and
naturalness at the last. Manhood is built quite as much by learning to
avoid evil as by cultivating the aspiration for the good.

Just as certainly as there are thousands suffering for the freedom of
spaces, far advanced in a losing fight of vitality against the cruel
tension of city life, there are whole races of men who have yet to meet
and pass through this terrifying complication of the crowds, which
brings a refining gained in no other way. All growth is a passage
through hollows and over hills, though the journey regarded as a whole
is an ascent.

A great leader of men who has never met the crowds face to face is
inconceivable. He must have fought for life in the depths and
pandemoniums, to achieve that excellence of equipment which makes men
turn to him for his word and his strength. We are so made that none of
us can remain sensitive