Wall, Ralph had been in the unbroken silences of nature so long, that the clack, and crash, and clamor of what we call civilized life almost crazed him.
He had been where his Maker almost seemed to come down and walk with him through the sweet, unbroken stillnesses of mornin' and evenin'. The world seemed so fur off to him, and the Eternal Verities of life so near, that truly, it sometimes seemed to him as if, like one of old, “he walked with God.” Of course the savages war-whooped some, but they wuz still a good deal of the time, which is more than you can say for Yankees.
And Loontown when he got home was rent to its very twain with a Presidential election.
Ralph suffered.
But above all his other sufferin's, he suffered from church bells.
Miss Timson lived, as it wuz her wish, and often her boast, right under the droppin's of the sanctuary.
She lotted on it when she bought the place. The Baptist steeple towered up right by the side of her house. Her spare bed wuz immegietly under the steeple.
Wall, comin' as he did from a place where he wuz called to worship by the voice of his soul and his good silver watch—this volume of clamor, this rushin' Niagara of sound a-pourin' down into his ears, wuz perfectly intolerable and onbeerable. He would lay awake till mornin' dreadin' the sound, and then colapse under it, till it run along and he come down with nervous fever.
He wuz worn out no doubt by his labors before he come, and any way he wuz took bed-sick, and couldn't be moved so's the doctor said, and he bein' outside of his own head, delerius, couldn't of course advance no idees of his own, so he lay and suffered.