ttle out of breath (God
bless them!), and a book cannot so much as get to me except on a mule's
back.

It is by no means an ideal arrangement--a mountain pass, but it is
better than always sitting in one's study in civilisation, where every
passer-by, pamphlet, boy in the street, thinks he might just as well
come up and ring one's door-bell awhile. All modern books are book
agents at heart, around getting subscriptions for themselves. If a man
wants to be sociable or literary nowadays, he can only do it by being a
more or less disagreeable character, and if he wishes to be a beautiful
character, he must go off and do it by himself.

This is a mere choice in suicides.

The question that presses upon me is: Whose fault is it that a poor
wistful, incomplete, human being, born into this huge dilemma of a
world, can only keep on having a soul in it, by keeping it (that is, his
soul) tossed back and forth--now in one place where souls are lost, and
now in another? Is it your fault, or mine, Gentle Reader, that we are
obliged to live in this undignified, obstreperous fashion in what is
called civilisation? I cannot believe it. Nearly all the best people one
knows can be seen sitting in civilisation on the edge of their chairs,
or hurrying along with their souls in satchels.

There is but one conclusion. Civilisation is not what it is advertised
to be. Every time I see a fresh missionary down at the steamer wharf, as
I do sometimes, starting away for other lands, loaded up with our
Institutions to the eyes, Church in one hand and Schoolhouse in the
other, trim, happy, and smiling over them, at everybody, I feel like
stepping up to him and saying, what seem to me, a few appropriate words.
I seldom do it, but the other day when I happened to be down at the
_Umbria_ dock about sailing-time, I came across one (a foreign
missionary, I mean) pleasant, thoughtless, and benevolent-looking,
standing there all by himself by the steamer-rail, and I thought I would
try speaking to him.

"Where are you going to be putting--those?" I said, pointing to a lot of
funny little churches and funny little schoolhouses he was holding in
both hands.

"From Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand," he said.

I looked at them a minute. "You don't think, do you?" I said--"You don't
really think you had better wait over a little--bring them back and let
us--finish them for you, do you? one or two--samples?" I said.

He looked at me wi