"Antæus—the fellow who wrestled with Hercules. Each time that Antæus was thrown against the earth his strength was doubled. He was finally in the way of overcoming Hercules, when Hercules by seizing him around the middle lifted him off the ground. By this strategy he deprived him of all contact with the earth, and presently Antæus weakened and was vanquished."
"That's me," said Quill, the journalist. "If I can't get back to my shack on Sunday, I feel that Hercules has me, too, around the middle."
"Perhaps I can find the story," said Wurm, his eye running toward the bookshelves.
"Don't bother," said Flint.
There was now another speaker—Flannel Shirt, as we called him—who had once been sated with formal dinners and society, and is now inclined to cry them down. He leans a bit toward socialism and free verse. He was about to praise the country for its freedom from sordidness and artificiality, when Flint, who had heard him before, interrupted.
"Rubbish!" he cried out. "All of you, but in different ways, are slaves to an old tradition kept up by Wordsworth, who would himself, doubtless, have moved to London except for the steepness of the rents. You all maintain that you like the country, yet on one excuse or another you live in the city and growl about it. There isn't a commuter among you. Honest folk, these commuters, with marrow in their bones—a steak in a paper bag—the sleet in their faces on the ferryboat. I am the only one who admits that he lives in the city because he prefers it. The country is good enough to read about—I like it in books—but I choose to sit meantime with my feet on a city fender."
Here Wurm broke in again. "I see, Flint," he said, "that you have been reading Leslie Stephen."
Flint denied it.
"Well, anyway, you have quoted him. Let me read you a bit of his essay on 'Country Books.'"
Flint made a grimace. "Wurm always has a favorite passage."