"While History tells us of many nations that have been attacked by it, of
many that have succumbed to it, and of some that are still in the throes
of it, we know of no single case in which a nation has fairly recovered
from and passed through it to a more normal and healthy condition. In
other words, the development of human society has never yet (that we know
of) passed beyond a certain definite and apparently final stage in the
process we call Civilization; at that stage it has always succumbed or
been arrested."

--EDWARD CARPENTER, _Civilization: Its Cause and Cure_


O'Malley himself is an individuality that invites consideration from the
ruck of commonplace men. Of mingled Irish, Scotch, and English blood, the
first predominated, and the Celtic element in him was strong. A man of
vigorous health, careless of gain, a wanderer, and by his own choice
something of an outcast, he led to the end the existence of a rolling
stone. He lived from hand to mouth, never quite growing up. It seemed,
indeed, that he never could grow up in the accepted sense of the term,
for his motto was the reverse of _nil admirari_, and he found himself in
a state of perpetual astonishment at the mystery of things. He was
forever deciphering the huge horoscope of Life, yet getting no further
than the House of Wonder, on whose cusp surely he had been born.
Civilization, he loved to say, had blinded the eyes of men, filling them
with dust instead of vision.

An ardent lover of wild outdoor life, he knew at times a high, passionate
searching for things of the spirit, when the outer world fell away like
dross and he seemed to pass into a state resembling ecstasy. Never in