Journey to Nature 



CHAPTER I 



SCARED TO LIFE 



TO pass suddenly out of the very tempest 

 and agony of life into the dead calm of 

 another existence; to stop all the rioting 

 faculties at full speed and go quietly away to vege 

 tating dreams, is an experience that not many men 

 have had, and the recital of it may not be without 

 interpretative edification to some of my fellows. 



I went out for a year. I could not have severed 

 myself more completely from my habitat and the 

 myriad points of contact with my kind, if I had 

 become what Coleridge calls &quot;a blessed ghost.&quot; 

 I cut my species dead and departed this life as 

 absolutely as was possible for a man to do with 

 out severing an artery or blowing his brains out. 



