16 
House & Garden 
RURALOMANIA 
Y OU can always tell a man who is new to living in the country 
because almost invariably he is afflicted with Ruralomania, the 
disease commonly known as Commuter's Fever. This is a strange 
and uncharted malady. One can never be sure in what form it will 
manifest itself. It begins with great virulence, accompanied by ex¬ 
cessive enthusiasms and continues on until the disease burns itself out, 
sometimes taking several years. There are many cases on record of 
the afflicted never recovering at all. Thus far no treatment has been 
discovered which will successfully combat its ravages; you have to 
let it run its course like chicken pox and measles. It is apt to recur, 
without warning or any apparent reason, especially in the spring and 
fall months. The most innocent conversation with a sufferer from 
Ruralomania is sufficient to give it to a hitherto healthy person, for it 
is a highly contagious disease. 
The first manifestations of the malady can be observed when a 
man takes a house in the country. He immediately breaks out into 
a rash of queer ways. He buys a guest book. He sits up half the 
night trying to choose a name for the place, and deliberately and 
without complaint he makes his person an express wagon for the 
delivery of idiosyncratic bundles. These bundles may contain a lawn 
mower, ten times more watermelon seed than he can use, a monkey 
wrench, a length of electric wire, or a pound of some sort of synthetic 
butter purchasable only in city shops. 
The first evidence of his recovery is shown when he ceases bringing 
home bundles. The guest book and the property name are also sen¬ 
sitive indexes to his return to normal condition—he is on the high 
road to health when he begins to get angry at the funny title painted 
on his front gate post and stamped on his writing paper. His recovery 
is almost complete when he ceases having guests write their names and 
a funny verse in the guest book. This is simultaneous with the period 
when he ceases having guests. 
T he average human being who suffers from a disease does not 
care to talk about it, but the afflicted with Ruralomania ap¬ 
parently have no such qualms. They discuss it blatantly, without 
shame and without end. 
There is my friend S-, a nice fellow, kindly disposed, optimistic, 
home-loving, hard-working and apparently sane. Meet him on the 
street and he’ll back you up against a wall and begin talking about 
the potatoes he is going to have this year. Perhaps you don't care 
for potatoes. That makes no difference, he insists on talking about 
them. Try to side-track him by mentioning drain pipes, and he’ll 
assure you that in his house in the country he has the best system 
of plumbing known. Try to coax him away with a drink, and 
he’ll come closer and whisper in your ear the complete liquid con¬ 
tents of his cellar, bottle by bottle. Then to top it off, he’ll tell 
you that you'll never know what living is until you live in the 
country. 
Or there is L-. Now L- is old enough to resist such 
attacks, but he has them constantly, 
repeatedly, and there doesn't seem 
to be anything that will cure him. 
He is just as bad in winter as in 
summer. He glories in snow drifts 
that make him take a three mile, 
roundabout walk to the station. 
With one breath he complains of 
the servant problem, the price of 
coal in the country, or the moles in 
his lawn, and with the other assures 
you that living in the city isn’t the 
act of a healthy, normal person. 
Every morning L-eats a hur¬ 
ried breakfast, dashes out of the 
house fastening his clothes, jog¬ 
trots down two mud roads and one 
macadam and catches the 7.26 by 
the last platform of the last car. 
He goes home each night festooned 
with packages like a Christmas 
tree before the kids have begun to 
tackle it. I’ve often wondered what 
he does with all those packages; 
his house must look like a pawn¬ 
shop. Yet, despite all these things, 
he has the affrontery to assure his 
friends that he wouldn't swap his 
little ol‘ Colonial shack for the best apartment on Riverside Drive. 
Most men who have Commuter’s Fever spend a good part of 
their time finding excuses for their manner of living to tell their 
city friends. They are like men who drink for medicinal purposes 
only. They rarely come out frankly and say that they live in the 
country because they like it. They usually pass the blame to some 
one else—the children are better for the country air, or the wife insists 
on fresh vegetables, or the rents are cheaper, or one can drive a Ford 
without having to apologize. When you look them square in the eye 
and ask if they really enjoy getting up with the chickens, snatching 
a catch-as-catch-can breakfast and doing a daily sprint for the train, 
why, bless you, they’ll blandly reply that they do enjoy these things! 
N OW something ought to be done about this, and I venture to 
make these suggestions. They are based on long observations 
of hundreds of cases, both mild and virulent Ruralomania. 
So soon as a man registers a rising enthusiasm of Commuter’s 
Fever, he should spend a night in town. Let him go to the theatre 
or eat at a restaurant with the boys, and sleep in a room where he will 
hear the rattle of trucks and the shouts of revelers coming home from 
orgies of 2.75 p.c. beer. This will keep him awake and give him a 
chance to think. Once he starts to think he’ll agree that there is 
something piquant, picturesque and fascinating about life in the city. 
WI 
THE RETURN 
I thrilled at sunsets on the painted desert, 
At rocky gorges where the torrent leaps, 
I gloried in the purple swirl of shore-line, 
Bold cliff-heads where the raging ocean sweeps. 
But when 1 turned and sought the tender home-land, 
1 sweeter, rarer ecstacy was horn 
At stars above a sleeping meadow, 
At winds across a field of tasseled corn. 
—Bose Henderson 
OMEN are much more honest about Commuter’s Fever than 
men. That is because the wife has not alone to suffer her own 
fever, but suffer her husband’s besides. Also, women recover much 
more quickly than men, especially if they have small children, no 
servants and the local grocery carries a poor stock. Sooner or later 
the female of the species gets the idea—and she is usually right— 
that she’s had about enough of this nurse, maid, cook, laundress and 
poor food existence, and begins to long for the bright lights. 
The same treatment should be given the wife of the commuter 
as is administered to him. She should have a day in town at least 
once in two weeks. She should get some one to watch the children 
and cook their meals. Then she should dress up in her best clothes, 
go to the city, rush from one department store to another, buy a lot 
of things that she can return as soon as they are delivered, treat 
herself and a friend to a luncheon in a restaurant where she will 
enjoy being seen, repeat the morning shopping, and then insist on her 
husband taking her to an expensive dinner and providing orchestra 
seats afterward. If she does that once a fortnight, or even once a 
month, she will never really suffer from Ruralomania. 
I T is a solemn fact—one can get too much of the country. One 
can permit himself to become so involved in his garden or his 
house that they enslave him. There is no use advising such a man 
to plant a smaller garden, or telling such a woman to take the 
house work easily. They won’t, because human nature is not 
built that way. 
The country has its own bondage 
—the bondage of fresh air and 
night calm and the sweet scent of 
flowers. One who has known these 
things can never rest content with¬ 
out them. A house has its bondage 
also—it imposes not alone respon¬ 
sibilities that make you slave for 
it, but your very affection for that 
home—and a God-sent affection it 
is—will make you unhappy unless 
you are slaving for it. 
These things are beautiful and 
true and lasting, but one should 
seek the refreshment of occasional 
release from them. To be sure, this 
will be like a school boy playing 
“hookey”—it will cause a sense of 
guilt, but nothing is more stimulat¬ 
ing once in a while than that. 
The cure for Commuter’s Fever, 
then, is an occasional night in 
town. It should be administered 
in unexpected doses when given to 
women—for they like to be sur¬ 
prised. Men should take it regu¬ 
larly. 
