HINDRANCES AND HELPS 



pose and hope — of escaping for a while the 

 interminable mental strain of the city, and of 

 giving himself up to full relaxation. And 

 this fact makes the isolation of which I have 

 spoken, more apparent than ever. 



And it is an isolation that cannot altogether 

 be left behind one. On your visits to the city, 

 friends will remark your seediness, not un- 

 kindly, but with an oblique eye-cast up and 

 down your figure — as a jockey measures a 

 stiff-limbed horse, long out to pasture. You 

 may wear what toggery you will — keeping by 

 the old tailors, and showing yourself bien gante, 

 and carefully read up to the latest dates; still 

 you shall betray yourself in some old dinner- 

 joke — dead long ago. And the friends will 

 say kindly, after you are gone, "How con- 

 foundedly seedy Rus. has grown !" 



Were this all, it were little. But the clash 

 and alarum of cities have stirred things to 

 their marrow, which you know only outsidedly. 

 The great nervous sensorium of a continent, — 

 with its wiry nerves raying like a spider's web, 

 in all directions,— is packed with subtle and 

 various meanings, which you, living on an 

 outer strand of the web, can neither under- 

 stand nor interpret. Mere accidental contact 

 will not establish affinity. In a dozen quarters 



283 



