What My Critics will Say 51 



of what I have put into the foregoing pages, 

 what I advance and believe is that the hard- 

 working city man does not get his rights out of 

 life. It may be that ignorance is bliss. He 

 may be swept so far in the wrong direction as 

 to lose all proper estimate of the good things 

 of this life ; his ideas of relative values may be 

 distorted. He may consider that fine clothes 

 and a big house make up for lack of real sport ; 

 he may find more pleasure in counting bills 

 than in sailing or walking. A misguided sense 

 of duty may keep him all his life half-starved 

 for rational sport; he may, like the unfortu- 

 nate person of whom I spoke at the beginning 

 of this book, "die in harness" as a typical 

 American. I believe that there is an escape 

 from the anxiety, the toil, the wear of business 

 in rational pursuits offered to us by the coun- 

 try, and that we can abandon the town without 

 sacrificing culture, education, and intellectual 

 life. I am free to admit that I should not ad- 

 vise any man accustomed to living i"n the tittle- 

 tattle of the town, accustomed to "paddling in 

 social slush," as Thoreau puts it, to go to the 

 country carrying nothing with him. If a man 



