THE LIFE WORTH LIVING. 165 



Therefore the problem becomes in the case 

 of ninety-nine men out of a hundred : Either to 

 give up one or the other. I have listened to 

 scores of persons to whom I have submitted 

 this problem, who are very certain that no 

 man, especially if bred in a large city, would 

 consent to forsake the pleasures of the town 

 for the quiet of the country. I took the 

 trouble once to find out, as nearly as possible, 

 exactly what the average business man means 

 by the word " pleasure." It seems that in the 

 opinion of the typical young man of business, 

 pleasure means going to the theatre once or 

 twice a week, meeting large numbers of other 

 young men and young women in the shops, or 

 in the streets, or in their homes, or at church. 

 The essence of this pleasure is the crowd, 

 largely of inane people characterized by unrest, 

 hurry, or idle curiosity. This same love of the 

 crowd characterizes many strata of society in 

 cities, and the disease seems to thrive by what 

 it feeds upon. As an illustration, take the his- 

 tory of the efforts made by one of our charita- 

 ble societies to induce some of the very poorest 

 inhabitants of our most squalid neighborhoods 

 to get into the country. For nearly twenty 



