ice. "Then,
for the last time," he hurried on, "the unattainable changed form for
me, and became what it seems now--happiness. For a little time I think I
was happy--happy in merely having made the discovery. Then came the
reaction. I was as I was, as I am now--a product of my past life, of a
civilization essentially artificial. In striving for a false ideal I had
unfitted myself for the real when at last I discovered it."

Unconsciously the man had come closer, and his eyes glowed. At last his
apathy was shaken off, and his words came in a torrent. "What I was then
I am to-day. Mentally, I am like an inebriate, who no longer finds
satisfaction in plain food and drink, but craves stimulants. I demand
activity, excitement, change. In every hour of my life I realize the
narrowness and artificiality of it all; but without it I am unhappy. I
sometimes think Mother Nature herself has disowned me; when I try to get
near her she draws away--I fancy with a shudder. Solitude of desert, of
forest, or of prairie is no longer solitude to me. It is filled with
voices--accusing voices; and I rush back to the crowd and the unrest of
the city. Even my former pleasures seem to have deserted me. You have
spoke often of accomplishing big things, doing something better than
anyone else can do it, as an example of pleasure supreme. If you
realized what you were saying you would know its irony. You cannot do a
thing better than anyone else. People, like water, strike a dead level.
No matter how you strive, dozens of others can do the thing you are
doing. Were you to die, your place would be filled to-morrow, and the
world would wag on just the same. There is always someone just beneath
you watchfully waiting, ready to seize your place if you relax your
effort for a moment. The term 'big things' is relative. To speak it is
merely to refer to something you do not personally understand. Nothing
seems really big to the one who does it. Nothing is difficult when you
understand it. The growing of potatoes in a backyard is just as
wonderful a performance as the painting of one of these pictures; it
would be more so were it not so common and so necessary. The
construction of a steam-engine or an electric dynamo is incomparably
more remarkable than the merging of separate thousands of capital into
millions of combination, yet multitudes of men everywhere can do either
of the former things and are unnoticed. We worship what we do not
understand, and c