We leave the crowd on the streets, we leave the kind neighbor at his
front gate, and travel on, not very far, but on alone into a wide quiet
country where we shall have a chance, perhaps, of meeting with
ourselves--the day's great adventure, and far to find; yet this is what
we have come out to the hills for.

Not for apples nor wood fires have we a hill in Hingham; not for hens
and a bigger house, and leisure, and conveniences, and excitements; not
for ways to earn a living, nor for ways to spend it. Stay in town for
that. There "you can even walk alone without being bored. No long,
uneventful stretches of bleak, wintry landscape, where nothing moves,
not even the train of thought. No benumbed and self-centered trees
holding out pathetic frozen branches for sympathy. Impossible to be
introspective here. Fall into a brown or blue study and you are likely
to be run over. Thought is brought to the surface by mental massage.
No time to dwell upon your beloved self. So many more interesting
things to think about. And the changing scenes unfold more rapidly
than a moving-picture reel."

This sounds much more interesting than the country. And it is more
interesting, Broadway asking nothing of a country lane for excitement.
And back they go who live on excitement; while some of us take this
same excitement as the best of reasons for double windows and storm
doors and country life the year through.

You can think in the city, but it is in spite of the city.
Gregariousness and individuality do not abide together; nor is external
excitement the cause or the concomitant of thought. In fact this
"mental massage" of the city is to real thinking about what a