

CHAPTER XIII 



MATURE TRUANTS 



THE next day he laughed me out of my de 

 termination to abandon the woods and go 

 O 



to the city. I could defy his advice, but 

 I could not withstand his laughter. He warned 

 me with considerable mirthfulness, which I 

 thought superfluous, against what he called mer 

 curial moods city vestiges. Men who never 

 know when the east wind blows and do not care 

 a fig how much humidity is in the atmosphere, 

 were the best men for practical purposes. Alto 

 gether he had a good deal of jolly contempt for 

 what he called &quot; the impertinent valetudinarian 

 sensibilities.&quot; The man who never knew that 

 he had a stomach, a heart, or even a brain, was 

 the man for him, for he came the nearest to 

 Nature s ideal. A man who would drink three 

 cups of black coffee, smoke six cigars, and then 

 turn into bed would be very apt to construct a 

 vast and dangerous theory of heart disease before 



