CABIN FEVER

CHAPTER ONE. THE FEVER MANIFESTS ITSELF

There is a certain malady of the mind induced by too much of one
thing. Just as the body fed too long upon meat becomes a prey to
that horrid disease called scurvy, so the mind fed too long upon
monotony succumbs to the insidious mental ailment which the West
calls "cabin fever." True, it parades under different names,
according to circumstances and caste. You may be afflicted in a
palace and call it ennui, and it may drive you to commit
peccadillos and indiscretions of various sorts. You may be
attacked in a middle-class apartment house, and call it various
names, and it may drive you to cafe life and affinities and
alimony. You may have it wherever you are shunted into a
backwater of life, and lose the sense of being borne along in the
full current of progress. Be sure that it will make you
abnormally sensitive to little things; irritable where once you
were amiable; glum where once you went whistling about your work
and your play. It is the crystallizer of character, the acid test
of friendship, the final seal set upon enmity. It will betray
your little, hidden weaknesses, cut and polish your undiscovered
virtues, reveal you in all your glory or your vileness to your
companions in exile--if so be you have any.

If you would test the soul of a friend, take him into the
wilderness and rub elbows with him for five months! One of three