have I gloried--do I owe, perhaps, salvation from that which tributary
friends in their meed of tenderness predicted--an untimely grave.

It is natural that those who live in cold climates and who wear for their
comfort clothing designed to exclude the air from all parts of the body
save the face should be steeped in conservatism; but the farther one
ventures from the chaste opinion of the world the less subserviency he
shows to customs and habits authoritative and relevant among
century-settled folk, and the more readily he adapts himself to his
environment the sooner does he become a true citizen of the country which
he has chosen. Preconceptions he must discard as unfit, if not fatal. He
is an alien until he learns to house, feed, and dress himself in
accordance with the inviolable laws which Nature prescribes to each and
every portion of her spacious and discordant realm.

Was I to remain fully clad and comfortless, or the reverse? The
indulgence of my sensations has brought about revolutionary changes of
costume and custom. Such changes were bound to react mentally, for are
they not merely the symbols of ideas? Once it was unseemly, if not
uncleanly, to perspire freely. Now the function is looked upon as
necessary, wholesome, and the sign of one's loyalty to the sun. The sun
compels thoughts. Daily, hourly does he exact homage and reign supreme
over mind, body, and estate. So commanding is his rule, so apparent his
goodwill, so speedy his punishment for sins of disobedience, so
influential his presence, that I have come to look up to him as the
transcendent manifestation of that power which ordains life and all
its privileges and abolishes all the noisesomeness of death. Alive,
he nourishes, comforts, consoles, corrects us. Dead, all that is mortal
he transforms into ethereal and vital gases. Obey him, and he blesses;
flout him, and you perish.