218 INDOOR STUDIES 



we readily attribute some extra virtue to those 

 persons who voluntarily embrace solitude, who live 

 alone in the country or in the woods, or in the 

 mountains, and find life sweet. We know they 

 cannot live without converse, without society of 

 some sort, and we credit them with the power of 

 invoking it from themselves, or else of finding more 

 companionship with dumb things than ordinary 

 mortals. In any case they give evidence of re- 

 sources which all do not possess. If not "exqui- 

 sitely made," hermits generally have a fine streak 

 in them, which preserves them in solitude. If a 

 man wants to get away from himself or from a 

 guilty conscience he does not retreat into the coun- 

 try, he flees to the town. If he is empty, the town 

 will fill him; if he is idle, the town will amuse 

 him; if he is vain, here is a field for his vanity; 

 if he is ambitious, here are dupes waiting to be 

 played upon; but if he is an honest man, here he 

 will have a struggle to preserve his integrity. The 

 rapid growth of cities in our time has its dark side. 

 Every man who has a demon to flee from, a vice to 

 indulge, an itching for notoriety to allay, money to 

 squander, or a dream of sudden wealth to cherish, 

 flees to the city, and, as most persons have one or 

 the other of these things, the city outstrips the 

 country. It is thought that the more a man is 

 civilized, the more his tastes are refined, the more 

 he will crave city life and the more benefit he wiU 

 get from it. But this may be questioned. It is 

 not, as a rule, a refined taste that takes men to 



