looked around him at the lovely, sloping lines of Hemlock Mountain, at the
Necronett River singing in the sunlight, at the familiar, friendly faces
of the people in the street, and he answered in astonishment at the
ignorance of his questioners, "_Do_? Why, we jes' _live_!"

We felt that he had explained us once and for all. We had known that, of
course, but we hadn't before, in our own phrase, "sensed it." We just
live. And sometimes it seems to us that we are the only people in America
engaged in that most wonderful occupation. We know, of course, that we
must be wrong in thinking this, and that there must be countless other
Hillsboros scattered everywhere, rejoicing as we do in an existence which
does not necessarily make us care-free or happy, which does not in the
least absolve us from the necessity of working hard (for Hillsboro is
unbelievably poor in money), but which does keep us alive in every fiber
of our sympathy and thrilling with the consciousness of the life of others.

A common and picturesque expression for a common experience runs, "It's so
noisy I can't hear myself think." After a visit to New York we feel that
its inhabitants are so deafened by the constant blare of confusion that
they can't feel themselves live. The steady sufferers from this complaint
do not realize their condition. They find it on the whole less trouble
_not_ to feel themselves live, and they are most uneasy when chance forces
them to spend a few days (on shipboard, for instance) where they are not
protected by ceaseless and aimless activity from the consciousness that
they are themselves. They cannot even conceive the bitter-sweet, vital
taste of that consciousness as we villagers have it, and they cannot
understand how arid their existence seems to us without this unhurried,
penetrating realization of their own existence and of the meaning of their
acts. We do not blame city dwellers for not having it; we ourselves lose
it when we venture into their maelstrom. Like them, we become dwarfed by