"Only what the newspapers print."
"And what's that? I've not noticed anything about it."
"Why, they all tell about the scope of the Vassar Summer School. It's founded"—and he grinned maliciously—"on the simple life."
"How?" snapped Ellis, clambering up out of the water to the flat, sandy shore of an exquisite pool some forty rods in length.
"Why, this way: The Vassar undergraduates, who formerly, after commencement, scattered into all the complexities of a silly, unprofitable, good old summer time, now have a chance to acquire simplicity and a taste for the rudimentary pleasures and pursuits they have overlooked in their twentieth-century gallop after the complex."
Ellis sullenly freed his line and glanced up at the clouds. It was already raining on the Golden Dome.
"So," continued Jones, "the Summer School took to the woods along with the rest of the simple-minded. I hear they have a library; doubtless it contains the Outlook and the Rollo books. They have courses in the earlier and simpler languages—the dead 'uns—Sanskrit, Greek, Latin; English, too, before it grew pin-feathers. They have a grand-stand built of logs out yonder where the mosquito hummeth; and some trees and a pond which they call a theatre devoted to the portrayal of the great primitive and simple passions and emotions. They have also dammed up the stream to make a real lake when they give tank-dramas like Lohengrin and the Rheingold; and the papers say they have a pair of live swans hitched to a boat—that is, a yellow reporter swears they have, but he was discovered taking snapshots at some Rhine-wine daughters, and hustled out of the woods——"
He paused to watch Ellis hook and play and presently land a splendid trout weighing close to two pounds.
"It's an outrage, an infernal outrage, for such people to dam the Caranay and invade this God-given forest with their unspeakable tin signs!" said Ellis, casting again.
"But they're only looking for a simpler life—just like you."