escaped), it seemed to be the
instinctive purpose of every citizen I knew not to get into politics but
to keep out. We sedulously avoided caucuses and school-meetings, our
time was far too precious to be squandered in jury service, we forgot to
register for elections, we neglected to vote. We observed a sort of
aristocratic contempt for political activity and then fretted and fumed
over the low estate to which our government had fallen--and never saw
the humour of it all.

At one time I experienced a sort of political awakening: a "boss" we
had was more than ordinarily piratical. I think he had a scheme to steal
the city hall and sell the monuments in the park (something of that
sort), and I, for one, was disturbed. For a time I really wanted to bear
a man's part in helping to correct the abuses, only I did not know how
and could not find out.

In the city, when one would learn anything about public matters, he
turns, not to life, but to books or newspapers. What we get in the city
is not life, but what someone else tells us about life. So I acquired a
really formidable row of works on Political Economy and Government (I
admire the word "works" in that application) where I found Society laid
out for me in the most perfect order--with pennies on its eyes. How
often, looking back, I see myself as in those days, read my learned
books with a sort of fury of interest!--

From the reading of books I acquired a sham comfort. Dwelling upon the
excellent theory of our institutions, I was content to disregard the
realities of daily practice. I acquired a mock assurance under which I
proceeded complacently to the polls, and cast my vote without knowing a
single man on the ticket, what he stood for, or what he really intended
to do. The ceremony of the ballot bears to politics much the
relationship that the sacrament bears to religion: how often, observing
the formality, we yet depart wholly from the spirit of the institution.

It was good to escape that place of hurrying strangers. It was good to
get one's feet down into the soil. It was good to be in a place where
things _are_ because they _grow_, and politics, not less than corn! Oh,
my friend, say what you please, argue how you like, this crowding
together of men and women in unnatural surroundings, this haste to be
rich in material things, this attempt to enjoy without production, this
removal from first-hand life, is irrational, and the end of it is ruin.
If our cities we