ands
and his own ingenuity and--"

"Yes, yes, I know," interrupted the disconsolate man. "Earn himself a
livelihood in the wilderness, live as the cave-man lived, carefree and
far from the curse of civilization!"

"That's it. That was my idea," I said, my enthusiasm rekindling as I
spoke. "That's what I'm doing; my food is to be the rude grass and the
roots that Nature furnishes for her children, and for my drink--"

"Yes, yes," he interrupted again with impatience, "for your drink the
running rill, for your bed the sweet couch of hemlock, and for your
canopy the open sky lit with the soft stars in the deep-purple vault of
the dewy night. I know."

"Great heavens, man!" I exclaimed. "That's my idea exactly. In fact,
those are my very phrases. How could you have guessed it?"

He made a gesture with his hand to indicate weariness and
disillusionment.

"Pshaw!" he said. "I know it because I've been doing it. I've been here
a fortnight now on this open-air, life-in-the-woods game. Well, I'm sick
of it! This last lets me out."

"What last?" I asked.

"Why, meeting you. Do you realize that you are the nineteenth man
that I've met in the last three days running about naked in the woods?
They're all doing it. The woods are full of them."

"You don't say so!" I gasped.

"Fact. Wherever you go in the bush you find naked men all working out
this same blasted old experiment. Why, when you get a little farther in
you'll see signs up: NAKED MEN NOT ALLOWED IN THIS BUSH, and NAKED MEN
KEEP OFF, and GENTLEMEN WHO ARE NAKED WILL KINDLY KEEP TO THE HIGH ROAD,
and a lot of things like that. You must have come in at a wrong place or
you'd have noticed the little shanties that they have now at the edge of
the New England bush with signs up: UNION SUITS BOUGHT AND SOLD, CAMERAS
FOR SALE OR TO RENT, HIGHEST PRICE FOR CAST-OFF CLOTHING, and all that
sort of thing."

"No," I said. "I saw nothing."

"Well, you look when you go back. As for me, I'm done with it. The
thing's worked out. I'm going back to the city to see whether I can't,
right there in the heart of the city, earn myself a livelihood with my
unaided hands and brains. That's the real problem; no more bumming on
the animals for me. This bush business is too easy. Well, good-bye; I'm
off."

"But stop a minute," I said. "How is it that, if what you say is true, I
haven't seen or heard anybody in the bush, and I've been here since the
middle of the morning?"

"Nonsens