"The modern large city, with its emotional stress, its social complexity, its hothouse coddling, its hectic jazz life, is destructive of happiness and manhood... I want to get away from the shrieking taxicabs, the jazz bands, the jammed street cars, the mad hurly-burly, the stench and the smoke.
"Metropolitan civilization hasn't a thing worth possessing, or essential to happiness that I cannot find in the woods and its villages, except a few creature comforts like porcelain tubs, steam heat and the like. Why should a man sell out the only life he has to live on earth, the things that make for happiness -- health, strength, clean air and water, s simple home life with his family, wholesome neighbors, a bit of leisure to read good books, to go trout fishing, to ramble in the woods in October, to live with trees and flowers and birds and wild creatures--why sell out all this for a porcelain bath tub and a gilded radiator?"
This is a recent fervent exclamation from one of the young American poets, Lew Sarett, author of exquisite woodland and Indian poetry in volumes such as "Many, Many Moons," "The Box of God" and "Slow Smoke." He was a picturesque and appealing figure on the campus at Illinois when daddy and I were in college, and we knew him to be sincere and human. He knew hard work, and lonesomeness and poverty, before he won his fame.
Strikes Answering Chord
What he says strikes an answering chord in many of us who love the country. Even though we do not see with poets' eyes; even though we let the dreary grind of daily life blind us to our blessings, there are many of us who would not think of changing our country lives, austere and cramped and primitive thought they be, for the nerve-racking activity of the city -- permanently
And yet there is something in all of us that cries out for the luxuries and softnesses of life. Comfort -- and ease -- and beauty! Sometimes we would barter our very souls to move among silks and satins, gilded radiators and porcelain tubs, gay people, and all the other blessings which civilization has brought. It is no wonder that country people grow discouraged, when they are starved for all these delectable things.
We love the country, and we love nature; but we need no dispise the man-made comforts of life. And we look forward to the time (not so far away) when every country home shall have not only its abundant natural chards, abut softly-glowing lights that come like magic at a touch, many gilded radiators, and at least on porcelain tub! --Hope