58 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside 



They all take their baths regularly. They have 

 untainted air, uncontaminated water, the alchemy 

 of the sun, and the electric currents of the earth. 

 Nobody ever saw a wild animal in the condition of 

 an illy groomed cow or horse. Their food is im- 

 mediately fresh, and they take food and exercise in 

 proper proportions. Precisely these are the con- 

 ditions of human health. But we live artificial and 

 unnatural, and therefore unhappy, lives, and we are 

 bond-slaves to our unnatural and unwholesome cus- 

 toms, wants, and ambitions. These fetters pinch 

 and gall us at every point, from a corned toe to a 

 sleepless brain. To write a catalogue of them 

 would require pages. Take a household occupying 

 a handsome home. The husband is a business 

 man. He must win wealth or be regarded by his 

 fellows as of a poor order of mind. He must dis- 

 play his wealth by an elaborate and complicated 

 style of living, in which he meets one and all of the 

 petty annoyances, restraints, and disappointments 

 and frustrations which are as pertinacious and 

 venomous as mosquitoes in a swamp. In business 

 he meets others like them, to which is added a 

 burden of anxious cares which never lifts, day nor 

 night. Do you call this happiness? It is terrestrial 

 hell, all the way through. And his wife — the most 

 pitiable creature alive. There is not a day in which 

 she is not wrought into a passion by the perversity, 

 meanness, or senselessness of servants, and by the 

 total depravity of all inanimate things around her. 



