would have in it more
than a selfish whim, an obsession for solitude. I want to get back
to primitive civilization. I want my children to face a simpler
world than the one I faced. Do you know what it means for a man to
inherit money, with nothing back of it for two generations but hard
work, although back of that there were, perhaps, kings? It means
that I had, unaided, to fit myself into a social scheme so complex
that I have not yet mastered its intricacies. I do not want to
master them. I do not want my sons to master them. I want them to
find life a thing of the day's work, the day's worship, the day's
out-of-door delights. I want them to have time to think and to
dream. And then some day they shall come back if they wish to
challenge civilization--young prophets, perhaps, out of the
wilderness--seeing a new vision of God and man because of their
detachment from all that might have blinded them.

"I have a feeling that your Nancy might, if she knew this, dream
with me of a new race, rising to the level of the needs of a new
world. She might see herself as the mother of such a
race--sheltered in my hidden land, sailing the seas with me, held
close to my heart. I think I am a masterful man, but I should be
masterful only to keep her to her best. If she faltered I should
strengthen her. And I should make her happy. I know that I could
make her happy. And for me there will never be another.

"I am leaving it to you to decide whether you will show her this. I
want her to see it, because it seems to me that she has a right to
decide between the life that I can offer her and the life she must
live if she marries Anthony Peak. But it all involves a point of
honor which I feel that I am not unprejudiced enough to decide. So
to-morrow I shall go away. I shall sail far in the two months that
I shall give myself before I come back. And when I come, you will
let me know whether I am to turn once more to the trackless seas,
or stay to find my happiness."

This letter when I had first read it had stirred me profoundly, as I
think it must have stirred any man or woman who has yearned amid the
complexities of modern existence to find some land of dreams. Even to my
island, comparatively untouched by the problems of existence in crowded
centers, come the echoes of discord, of s