they say to such a costume as mine? What did I care
what they said!

But, all the same, it was a shock, a disenchantment, to find that
civilization, with all its absurdities and conventionalities, was so
threateningly close to my new-found wilderness. My first enthusiasm was
not a little chilled as I walked back, along an open woodland path, to
the bridge where Graygown was placidly reading. Reading, I say, though
her book was closed, and her brown eyes were wandering over the green
leaves of the thicket, and the white clouds drifting, drifting lazily
across the blue deep of the sky.

II. A BETTER ACQUAINTANCE

On the voyage home, she gently talked me out of my disappointment, and
into a wiser frame of mind.

It was a surprise, of course, she admitted, to find that our wilderness
was so little, and to discover the trail of a parlour-car on the edge
of Paradise. But why not turn the surprise around, and make it pleasant
instead of disagreeable? Why not look at the contrast from the side that
we liked best?

It was not necessary that everybody should take the same view of life
that pleased us. The world would not get on very well without people
who preferred parlour-cars to canoes, and patent-leather shoes to
India-rubber boots, and ten-course dinners to picnics in the woods.
These good people were unconsciously toiling at the hard and necessary
work of life in order that we, of the chosen and fortunate few, should
be at liberty to enjoy the best things in the world.

Why should we neglect our opportunities, which were also our real
duties? The nervous disease of civilization might prevail all around
us, but that ought not to destroy our grateful enjoyment of the lucid
intervals that were granted to us by a merciful Providence.

Why should we not take this little untamed brook, running its humble
course through the borders of civilized life and midway between two
flourishing summer resorts,--a brook without a single house or a
cultivated field on its banks, as free and beautiful and secluded as if
it flowed through miles of trackless forest,--why not take this brook as
a sign that the ordering of the universe had a "good intention" even for
inveterate idlers, and that the great Arranger of the world felt some
kindness for such gipsy-hearts as ours? What law, human or divine, was
there to prevent us from making this stream our symbol of deliverance
from the conventional and commonplace, our guide to libert