The Quest of the Simple Life

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The Quest of the Simple Life

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Quest of the Simple Life, by
William J. Dawson
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Title: The Quest of the Simple Life
Author: William J. Dawson

Release Date: December 6, 2005 [eBook #17246]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUEST
OF THE SIMPLE LIFE***
E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE QUEST OF THE SIMPLE LIFE
by
W. J. DAWSON

New York E. P. Dutton and Co. 31 West Twenty-Third Street 1907
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty

Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnim. VIRG., Ecl.
viii., l. 72.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE
CHAPTER II
GETTING THE BEST OUT OF LIFE
CHAPTER III
GETTING A LIVING, AND LIVING
CHAPTER IV
EARTH-HUNGER
CHAPTER V
HEALTH AND ECONOMICS

CHAPTER VI
IN SEARCH OF THE PICTURESQUE
CHAPTER VII
I FIND MY COTTAGE
CHAPTER VIII
BUYING HAPPINESS
CHAPTER IX
HOW WE LIVED
CHAPTER X
NEIGHBOURSHIP
CHAPTER XI
THE WOUNDS OF A FRIEND
CHAPTER XII
AM I RIGHT?
CHAPTER XIII
THE CITY OF THE FUTURE
CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE
For a considerable number of years I had been a resident in London,

which city I regarded alternately as my Paradise and my House of
Bondage. I am by no means one of those who are always ready to fling
opprobrious epithets at London, such as 'a pestilent wen,' a cluster of
'squalid villages,' and the like; on the contrary, I regard London as the
most fascinating of all cities, with the one exception of that city of
Eternal Memories beside the Tiber. But even Horace loved the
olive-groves of Tivoli more than the far-ranged splendours of the
Palatine; and I may be pardoned if an occasional vision of green fields
often left my eye insensitive to metropolitan attractions.
This is a somewhat sonorous preface to the small matter of my story;
but I am anxious to elaborate it a little, lest it should be imagined that I
am merely a person of bucolic mind, to whom all cities or large
congregations of my fellow-men are in themselves abhorrent. On the
contrary I have an inherent love of all cities which are something more
than mere centres of manufacturing industry. The truly admirable city
secures interest, and even passionate love, not because it is a congeries
of thriving factories, but rather by the dignity of its position, the
splendour of its architecture, the variety and volume of its life, the
imperial, literary, and artistic interests of which it is the centre, and the
prolongation of its history through tumultuous periods of time, which
fade into the suggestive shadows of antiquity. London answers
perfectly to this definition of the truly admirable city. It has been the
stage of innumerable historic pageants; it presents an unexampled
variety of life; and there is majesty in the mere sense of multitude with
which it arrests and often overpowers the mind.
As I have already, with an innocent impertinence, justified myself by
Horace, so I will now justify myself by Wordsworth, whose famous
sonnet written on Westminster Bridge is sufficient proof that he could
feel the charm of cities as deeply as the charm of Nature. 'Earth hath
not anything to show more fair,' wrote Wordsworth, and of a truth
London has moods and moments of almost unearthly beauty, perhaps
unparalleled by any vision that inebriates the eye in the most gorgeous
dawn that flushes Alpine snows, or the most solemn sunset that builds a
gate of gold across the profound depth of Borrowdale or Wastwater. He
who has seen the tower of St. Clement Danes swim up, like an

insubstantial fabric, through violet mist above the roaring Strand; or the
golden Cross upon St. Paul's with a flag of tinted cloud flying from it;
or the solemn reaches of the Thames bathed in smoky purple at the
slow close of a summer's day, will know what I mean, and will (it is
possible) have some memory of his own which will endorse the
justness of my praise.
From this exalted prelude I will at once descend to more prosaic matter,
leaving my reader, in his charity, to devise for me an apology which I
have neither the wit nor the desire to invent for myself. With the best
will in the world to speak in praise of cities it must be owned that the
epic and lyric moments of London