Cities, doubtless, are rational and logical things 

 from many points of view, and to the greater per- 

 centage of urban dwellers the cry of nature would 

 awaken no responsive call. They are covered over 

 and surrounded and permeated with such a depth and 

 breadth and weight of tradition, like so many ships at 

 the bottom of the sea, that any influence from the 

 outside fails to reach them, fails to affect them any 

 more than the wind and storm-waves disturb the 

 wrecks cradled on the ocean's floor. 



Occasionally, to an individual among benighted 

 city dwellers comes a voice or a written word, like a 

 diver to an isolated treasure-hulk, which sets in motion 

 influences that eventually carry the subject to the 

 surface and away from the entombment. Other in- 

 dividuals, like ocean's flotsam and jetsam, are simply 

 spued up by the city sea. To which class of the res- 

 cued we belong it is hard to say; for we don't seem 

 to remember the time when the message of nature 

 came unheeded to our ears, or when the longing for 

 country life did not exist.— IV alter P. Terry. 



