"You prefer a rural to a city life, do you not?" I asked.
"Yes," she answered. "There is really too much company in the city, and you have too little time to yourself. Then there is the temptation to visit and receive friends. Time flies quickly, and life is apt to slip by without accomplishing anything. In the country you have time to reflect, and view objects as they were originally designed by Nature, to which the works of man have a constant tendency to revert." She went on, "The country, and not the city, appears to me to be the true home of the human race; life in it is more simple and less artificial than in the large centres of population. And this is well known to our legislators, who are endeavouring to make the cities as like the country as possible. Scalascala, for instance, could hardly be called a city at all."
"Do you not think," I said, "that you are highly compensated for the time you spend with your friends, we'll say in comparative indolence, by the exchange of ideas, which has a tendency, generally speaking, to give an impetus to thought?"
"Very true," she replied. "I believe that limited conversation is essential to progress; and
