Nature in a City Yard Author:Charles M. Skinner Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill CITY AND COUNTRY LIFE OUR yard is only an epitome of and substitute for the real thing, which is the country. I do not live in town because I want to, ... more »but because I must. The trade I learned can be practised only in town; its pay is apt to be so restricted that retirement on one's savings from the practice of it is practically unheard of; and I want to educate the children. There are no groves of Academus, or I would pack them off forthwith, and perhaps occupy some adjacent cabin, and devote myself to raising potatoes and Cain for their Saturday holiday. In the nearly hopeless hope of some day having a home in the village of my fathers, there being free to deal saucily with mankind and take walks, I find few sympathizers; for is not art more thannature? man more than mountains? much acquaintance more than few? No,—to each of these propositions. A mob is physically and mentally repellent to me, and its clothes and its behavior have little to do with this repugnance. Nature means liberty, and liberty means life. Mr. Bellamy's hopeful but fanciful economy has not considered one of the origins for the evils that threaten us: crowding. Americans are growing afraid of that wholesome rural life that gave force and composure to their fathers, and that is reflected so sweetly by the English and New England writers. They are falling into the town habit, which, like most habits, grows by what it feeds on, and is commonly acquired by crediting the fallacy that life, society, gaiety, art, letters, learning, and all forms of progress come of physical aggregation. What force is in numbers, except brute force ? Because we do justice, keep order, and claim privileges for each other, does it follow that we must associate with all men, including dirty men, mean men,drunken men ? Our ...« less