Child and Country: A Book of the Younger Generation by Will Comfort is about the process of building a true home in the country after abandoning the ways of city life. Excerpt: “In another place,[1] I have touched upon our first adventure in the country. It was before the children came. We went to live in a good district, but there was no peace there. I felt forgotten. I had not the stuff to stand that. My life was shallow and artificial enough then to require the vibration of the town, and at the end of a few weeks, it was feverishly missed. The soil gave me nothing. I look back upon that fact now with something like amazement, but I was young. Lights and shining surfaces were dear; all waste and stimulation a part of necessity, and that which the many rushed after seemed the things that a man should have. Though the air was dripping with fragrance and the early summer ineffable with fruit blossoms, the sense of self [Pg 18]poisoned the paradise. I disdained even to make a place of the order of that little plot.”
