CHAPTER VI 

 THE WAR WITH NATURE 



DURING my sojourn on the Rio Negro letters 

 and papers reached me only at rare inter- 

 vals. On one occasion I passed very nearly two 

 months without seeing a newspaper. I remember, 

 when at the end of that time one was put before 

 me, I snatched it up eagerly, and began hastily 

 scanning the columns, or column-headings rather, 

 in search of startling items from abroad, and that 

 after a couple of minutes I laid it down again to 

 listen to some one talking in the room, and that 

 I eventually left the place without reading the 

 paper at all. I suppose I snatched it up at first 

 mechanically, just as a cat, even when not hungry, 

 pounces on a mouse it sees scuttling across its 

 path. It was simply the survival of an old habit 

 a trick played by unconscious memory on the in- 

 tellect, like the action of the person who has re- 

 sided all his life in a hovel, and who, on entering 

 a cathedral door or passing under a lofty arch- 

 way, unwittingly stoops to avoid bumping his 

 forehead against an imaginary lintel. I was con- 

 scious on quitting the room, where I had cast 

 aside the unread newspaper, that the old interest 



72 



