s. Surely, in these dull alcoves, gravity nods on its job.
Then he buys a sour red apple at the corner and pelts home to dinner.
This is served him on a tin tray by his stout landlady who comes
puffing up the stairs. It is a bit of pleasant comedy that whatever
dish is served happens to be the very one of which he was thinking as
he came out of the bank. By this innocent device he is popular with
his landlady and she skims the milk for him.

Wurm rapped his pipe bowl on the arm of his chair. "You must be like
Antaeus," he replied.

"Like what?" asked Flint.

"Antaeus--the fellow who wrestled with Hercules. Each time that Antaeus
was thrown against the earth his strength was doubled. He was finally
in the way of overcoming Hercules, when Hercules by seizing him around
the middle lifted him off the ground. By this strategy he deprived him
of all contact with the earth, and presently Antaeus weakened and was
vanquished."

"That's me," said Quill, the journalist. "If I can't get back to my
shack on Sunday, I feel that Hercules has me, too, around the middle."

"Perhaps I can find the story," said Wurm, his eye running toward the
bookshelves.

"Don't bother," said Flint.

There was now another speaker--Flannel Shirt, as we called him--who
had once been sated with formal dinners and society, and is now
inclined to cry them down. He leans a bit toward socialism and free
verse. He was about to praise the country for its freedom from
sordidness and artificiality, when Flint, who had heard him before,
interrupted.

"Rubbish!" he cried out. "All of you, but in different ways, are
slaves to an old tradition kept up by Wordsworth, who would himself,
doubtless, have moved to London except for the steepness of the rents.
You all maintain that you like the country, yet on one excuse or
another you live in the city and growl about it. There isn't a
commuter among you. Honest folk, these commuters, with marrow in their
bones--a steak in a paper bag--the sleet in their faces on the
ferryboat. I am the only one who admits that he lives in the city
because he prefers it. The country is good enough to read about--I
like it in books--but I choose to sit meantime with my feet on a city
fender."

Here Wurm broke in again. "I see, Flint," he said, "that you have been
reading Leslie Stephen."

Flint denied it.

"Well, anyway, you have quoted him. Let me read you a bit of his essay
on 'Country Books.'"

Flint made a grimace. "Wur