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158
Adventures in Contentment
·
David Grayson
138
In
the
city,
when
one
would
learn
anything
about
public
matters,
he
turns,
not
to
life,
but
to
books
or
newspapers.
What
we
get
in
the
city
is
not
life,
but
what
someone
else
tells
us
about
life.
So
I
acquired
a
really
formidable
row
of
works
on
Political
Economy
and
Government
(I
admire
the
word
"works"
in
that
application)
where
I
found
Society
laid
out
for
me
in
the
most
perfect
order--with
pennies
on
its
eyes.
How
often,
looking
back,
I
see
myself
as
in
those
days,
read
my
learned
books
with
a
sort
of
fury
of
interest!--
From
the
reading
of
books
I
acquired
a
sham
comfort.
Dwelling
upon
the
excellent
theory
of
our
institutions,
I
was
content
to
disregard
the
realities
of
daily
practice.
I
acquired
a
mock
assurance
under
which
I
proceeded
complacently
to
the
polls,
and
cast
my
vote
without
knowing
a
single
man
on
the
ticket,
what
he
stood
for,
or
what
he
really
intended
to
do.
The
ceremony
of
the
ballot
bears
to
politics
much
the
relationship
that
the
sacrament
bears
to
religion:
how
often,
observing
the
formality,
we
yet
depart
wholly
from
the
spirit
of
the
institution.
It
was
good
to
escape
that
place
of
hurrying
strangers.
It
was
good
to
get
one's
feet
down
into
the
soil.
It
was
good
to
be
in
a
place
where
things
are
because
they
grow,
and
politics,
not
less
than
corn!
Oh,
my
friend,
say
what
you
please,
argue
how
you
like,
this
crowding
together
of
men
and
women
in
unnatural
surroundings,
this
haste
to
be
rich
in
material
things,
this
attempt
to
enjoy
without
production,
this
removal
from
first-hand
life,
is
irrational,
and
the
end
of
it
is
ruin.
If
our
cities
were
not
recruited
constantly
with
the
fresh,
clean
blood
of
the
country,
with
boys
who
still
retain
some
of
the
power
and
the
vision
drawn
from
the
soil,
where
would
they
be!
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