Unconsciously the man had come closer, and his eyes glowed.  At last his apathy was shaken off, and his words came in a torrent.  “What I was then I am to-day.  Mentally, I am like an inebriate, who no longer finds satisfaction in plain food and drink, but craves stimulants.  I demand activity, excitement, change.  In every hour of my life I realize the narrowness and artificiality of it all; but without it I am unhappy.  I sometimes think Mother Nature herself has disowned me; when I try to get near her she draws away—­I fancy with a shudder.  Solitude of desert, of forest, or of prairie is no longer solitude to me.  It is filled with voices—­accusing voices; and I rush back to the crowd and the unrest of the city.  Even my former pleasures seem to have deserted me.  You have spoke often of accomplishing big things, doing something better than anyone else can do it, as an example of pleasure supreme.  If you realized what you were saying you would know its irony.  You cannot do a thing better than anyone else.  People, like water, strike a dead level.  No matter how you strive, dozens of others can do the thing you are doing.  Were you to die, your place would be filled to-morrow, and the world would wag on just the same.  There is always someone just beneath you watchfully waiting, ready to seize your place if you relax your effort for a moment.  The term ‘big things’ is relative.  To speak it is merely to refer to something you do not personally understand.  Nothing seems really big to the one who does it.  Nothing is difficult when you understand it.  The growing of potatoes in a backyard is just as wonderful a performance as the painting of one of these pictures; it would be more so were it not so common and so necessary.  The construction of a steam-engine or an electric dynamo is incomparably more remarkable than the merging of separate thousands of capital into millions of combination, yet multitudes of men everywhere can do either of the former things and are unnoticed.  We worship what we do not understand, and call it big; but the man in the secret realizes the mockery and smiles.”

Closer came the dark face.  The black eyes, intense and flashing, held the listener in their gaze.

“I said that even my pleasures seem to have deserted me.  It is true.  I used to like to wander about the city, to see it at its busiest, to loiter amid the hum and the roar and the ceaseless activity.  I saw in it then only friendly rivalry, like a hurdle race or a football game—­something pleasing and stimulating.  Now it all affects me in just the reverse way.  I look beneath the surface, and my heart sinks to find not friendly competition, but a battle, where men and women fight for daily bread, where the weak are crowded and trampled upon by the strong.  In ordinary battle the maimed and the crippled are spared, but here they still fight on.  Mercy or quarter is unknown.  Oh, it is ghastly!  I used to take pleasure in books, in the work of others; but even this satisfaction has