But your observation is superficial. You have not penetrated into the
secret place where souls abide. You are staring only at the outside
layer of your neighbors; just peel them and see what you will find.

I speak from the highest possible authority,--my own. Representing the
gentler half of humanity, of respectable birth, tolerable parts, and
good education, as tender-hearted as most women, not unfamiliar with
the best society, mingling, to some extent, with those who understand
and practise the minor moralities, you would at once infer from my
circumstances that I was a very fair specimen of the better class of
Americans,--and so I am. For one that stands higher than I in the
moral, social, and intellectual scale, you will undoubtedly find ten
that stand lower. Yet through all these layers gleam the fiery eyes of
my savage. I thought I was a Christian, I have endeavored to do my duty
to my day and generation; but of a sudden Christianity and civilization
leave me in the lurch, and the "old Adam" within me turns out to be
just such a fierce Saxon pirate as hurtled down against the white
shores of Britain fifteen hundred years ago.

For we have been moving.

People who live in cities and move regularly every year from one good,
finished, right-side-up house to another will think I give a very small
reason for a very broad fact; but they do not know what they are
talking about. They have fallen into a way of looking upon a house only
as an exaggerated trunk, into which they pack themselves annually with
as much nonchalance as if it were only their preparation for a summer
trip to the seashore. They don't strike root anywhere. They don't have
to tear up anything. A man comes with cart and horses. There is a stir
in the one house,--they are gone;--there is a stir in the other