"Oh, you don't like the life?"
"I like it all right, but it's too complex. Listen to me. You asked me why anybody ever let me escape into the woods. I'll tell you.... You're a New Yorker, are you not?"
Ellis nodded.
"All right. First look on this picture: I live in the Sixties, near enough to the Park to see it. It's green, and I like it. Besides, there are geraniums and other posies in my back yard, and I can see them when the laundress isn't too busy with the clothes-line. So much for the mise en scène; me in a twenty-by-one-hundred house, perfectly contented; Park a stone's toss west, back yard a few feet north. My habits? Simple enough to draw tears from a lambkin! I breakfast at nine—an egg, fruit, coffee and—I hate to admit it—the Sun. At eleven I go down-town to see if there's anything doing. There never is, so I smoke one cigar with my partner and then we lunch together. I then walk uptown—walk, mind you. At the club I look at the ticker, or out of the window. Later I play cowboy or billiards for an hour. I take one cocktail—one, if you please. I converse." He waved his pipe; Ellis nodded solemnly.
"Then," continued Jones, "what do I do?"
"I don't know," replied Ellis.
"I'll tell you. I call a cab—one taxi, or one hansom, as the state of the weather may suggest—I drive through the Park, pleasantly aware of the verdure, the squirrels, and the babies; I arrive at my home; I mount to the library and there I select from my limited collection some accursed book I've always heard of but have never read—not fiction, but something stupefying and worth while. This I read for exactly one hour. I then need a drink. I then dress; and if I'm dining out, out I go—if not, I dine at home. Twice a week I attend the theatre, but I neutralise that by doing penance at the opera every Monday during the season.... There, Ellis, is the story of a simple life! Look on that picture. Now look on this: Me in the backwoods, fly-bitten, smoke-choked, a half-charred flapjack in my fist, a porcupine-gnawed rind of pork on a stick, attempting to broil the same at a fire, the smoke of which blinds me. Me, again, belly down, peering hungrily over the bank of a stream, attempting to snatch a trout with a bare hook, my glasses slipping off repeatedly, the spectre of starvation scourging on me. Me, once more, frantic with indigestion and mosquitoes, lurking under a blanket, the root of a tree bruising my backbone; me in the morning, done up, shaving in icy water and cutting my chin; me, half shaved, searching for a scrap of nourishment, gauntly prowling among cold and greasy fry-pans! Ellis! Which is the simpler life, in Heaven's name?"
Ellis's laughter was the laughter of a woodsman, full, infectious, but almost noiseless. The birds came back and teetered on adjacent twigs, cheeping in friendly unison; a chipmunk, chops distended, popped up from the case of eggs like a striped jack-in-a-box, not at all afraid of a man who laughed that way.
"How did you ever come into the woods?" he asked at length.
"Lunatic friends and fool books persuaded me I was missing something. I read all about how to tell a woodcock from a peacock; how to dig holes in the ground and raise little pea vines, and how to make two blades of grass grow where the laundress had set a devastating shoe. Then I tired of it. But friends urged me on, and one idiot said that I looked like the victim of a rare disease and gave me a shotgun—whether to shoot myself or the dicky birds I'm not perfectly certain yet. Besides, as I have a perfect hatred of taking life, I had no temptation to shoot guides in Maine or niggers in South Carolina, where the quail come from. Still, I was awake to the new idea. I read more books on bats and woodchucks; I smelled every flower I saw; I tried to keep up," he said, earnestly; "by Heaven, I did my best! And now, look at me! Nature hands me the frozen mitt!"