and they all journey about me on my stump in the hilltop.

We love human nature; we love to get back to it in New York and
Boston,--for a day, for six months in the winter even,--but we need to
get back to the hills at night. We are a conventional, gregarious,
herding folk. Let an American get rich and he builds a grand house in
the city. Let an Englishman get rich and he moves straight into the
country--out to such a spot as Bradley Hill in Hingham.

There are many of the city's glories and conveniences lacking here on
Mullein Hill, but Mullein Hill has some of the necessities that are
lacking in the city--wide distances and silent places, and woods and
stumps where you can sit down and feel that you are greater than
anything in sight. In the city the buildings are too vast; the people
are too many. You might feel greater than any two or three persons
there, perhaps, but not greater than nearly a million.

No matter how centered and serene I start from Hingham, a little way
into Boston and I am lost. First I begin to hurry (a thing unnecessary
in Hingham) for everybody else is hurrying; then I must get somewhere;
everybody else is getting somewhere, getting everywhere. For see them
in front of me and behind me, getting there ahead of me and coming
after me to leave no room for me when I shall arrive! But when shall I
and where shall I arrive? And what shall I arrive for? And who am I
that I would arrive? I look around for the encircling horizon, and up
for the overarching sky, and in for the guiding purpose; but instead of
a purpose I am hustled forward by a crowd, and at the bottom of a
street far down beneath such overhanging walls as leave me but a slit
of smoky sky. I am in the hands of a force mightier than I, in the
hands of the police force at the street corners, and am carried across