"I went to Washington with my husband and—"
"Precisely—that's enough!" he waved his thin hand.
"But it rests me to travel," Isabelle protested.
"It seems to rest you. Did you ever think what all those whisking changes in your environment mean to the brain cells? And it isn't just travelling, with new scenes, new people; it is everything in your life,—every act from the time you get up to the time you go to bed. You are cramming those brain cells all the time, giving them new records to make,—even when you lie down with an illustrated paper. Why, the merest backwoodsman in Iowa is living faster in a sense than Cicero or Webster…. The gray matter cannot stand the strain. It isn't the quality of what it has to do; it is the mere amount! Understand?"
"I see! I never thought before what it means to be tired. I have worked the machine foolishly. But one must travel fast—be geared up, as you say—or fall behind and become dull and uninteresting. What is living if we can't keep the pace others do?"
"Must we? Is that living?" he asked ironically. "I have a diary kept by an old great-aunt of mine. She was a country clergyman's wife, away back in a little village. She brought up four sons, helped her husband fit them for college as well as pupils he took in, and baked and washed and sewed. And learned German for amusement when she was fifty! I think she lived somewhat, but she probably never lived at the pressure you have the past month."
"One can't repeat—can't go back to old conditions. Each generation has its own lesson, its own way."
"But is our way living? Are we living now this very minute, listening to music we don't apparently care for, that means nothing to us, with our mind crammed full of distracting purposes and reflections? When I read my aunt Merelda's journal of the silent winter days on the snowy farm, I think she lived, as much as one should live. Living doesn't consist in the number of muscular or nervous reactions that you undergo."
"What is your formula?"
"We haven't yet mentioned the most formidable reason for the American plague," he continued, ignoring her question. "It has to do with that troublesome term we evaded,—the Soul."