n8 The Life Worth Living 



jelly, candied sweet potatoes, and steaming 

 hot coffee. 



I dream of these dinners the other eleven 

 months of the year. How far away and un- 

 important the land world seems now! We 

 are fifteen miles off shore — fifteen miles from 

 a post-office, telegraph line, or a railroad. 

 We never see a newspaper, know nothing 

 about what is going on in the big, steaming, 

 festering cities, and have ceased to care to 

 know. Our world is now a beautiful bay, 

 fed from the sea by two pulsing tides a day. 

 Only the winds and tides are important. 

 How vain and stupid and unreal seem the 

 vulgar ambitions of men and women who herd 

 in those big iron and stone-bound hives and 

 strive with one another! 



It was here that the sense of the pity, the 

 pathos, and the folly of this struggle first 

 stole into my heart, and I ceased to care to 

 be great. I used to think that I was carry- 

 ing a large part of the world on my shoul- 



