running up and down as though they were looking for the lost
simplicity of nature. 'We dropped it here!'" He earned a living, we
gathered, "some considerable way above the minimum wage," which
threw a chance light on the labour problem--by perforating records
for automatic musical machines--no doubt of the Pianotist and
Pianola kind--and he spent all the leisure he could gain in going to
and fro in the earth lecturing on "The Need of a Return to Nature,"
and on "Simple Foods and Simple Ways." He did it for the love of it.
It was very clear to us he had an inordinate impulse to lecture, and
esteemed us fair game. He had been lecturing on these topics in
Italy, and he was now going back through the mountains to lecture in
Saxony, lecturing on the way, to perforate a lot more records,
lecturing the while, and so start out lecturing again. He was
undisguisedly glad to have us to lecture to by the way.

He called our attention to his costume at an early stage. It was the
embodiment of his ideal of Nature-clothing, and it had been made
especially for him at very great cost. "Simply because naturalness
has fled the earth, and has to be sought now, and washed out from
your crushed complexities like gold."

"I should have thought," said I, "that any clothing whatever was
something of a slight upon the natural man."

"Not at all," said he, "not at all! You forget his natural
vanity!"

He was particularly severe on our artificial hoofs, as he called our
boots, and our hats or hair destructors. "Man is the real King of
Beasts and should wear a mane. The lion only wears it by consent and