The town is one large house of which all the little houses are rooms.
The streets are the stairs. Those who live always in the town are
never out of doors even if they do take the air in the streets.

When I came into the town I found that in my soul were reflected its
blank walls, its interminable stairways, and the shadows of hurrying
traffic.

A thousand sights and impressions, unbidden, unwelcome, flooded
through the eye-gate of my soul, and a thousand harsh sounds and
noises came to me through my ears and echoed within me. I became aware
of confused influences of all kinds striving to find some habitation
in the temple of my being.

What had been my delight in the country, my receptivity and
hospitality of consciousness, became in the town my misery and my
despair.

For imagine! Within my own calm mirror a beautiful world had seen
itself rebuilded. Mountains and valleys lay within me, robed in sunny
and cloudy days or marching in the majesty of storm. I had inbreathed
their mystery and outbreathed it again as my own. I had gazed at the
wide foaming seas till they had gazed into me, and all their waves
waved their proud crests within me. Beauteous plains had tempted,
mysterious dark forests lured me, and I had loved them and given them
habitation in my being. My soul had been wedded to the great strong
sun and it had slumbered under the watchful stars.

The silence of vast lonely places was preserved in my breast. Or
against the background of that silence resounded in my being the roar