"
The artist gazed dreamily at the cartridge paper on the wall. "This
town," said he, "is a leech. It drains the blood of the country. Whoever
comes to it accepts a challenge to a duel. Abandoning the figure of the
leech, it is a juggernaut, a Moloch, a monster to which the innocence,
the genius, and the beauty of the land must pay tribute. Hand to hand
every newcomer must struggle with the leviathan. You've lost, Billy. It
shall never conquer me. I hate it as one hates sin or pestilence or--the
color work in a ten-cent magazine. I despise its very vastness and
power. It has the poorest millionaires, the littlest great men, the
lowest skyscrapers, the dolefulest pleasures of any town I ever saw. It
has caught you, old man, but I will never run beside its chariot wheels.
It glosses itself as the Chinaman glosses his collars. Give me the
domestic finish. I could stand a town ruled by wealth or one ruled by
an aristocracy; but this is one controlled by its lowest ingredients.
Claiming culture, it is the crudest; asseverating its pre-eminence,
it is the basest; denying all outside values and virtue, it is the
narrowest. Give me the pure and the open heart of the West country.
I would go back there to-morrow if I could.
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