Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: everything is as optimistic as he pretends to be. It is a commendable pose. I have often thought of writing to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, when I have heard of the poor dogs being trotted out for long arid walks before breakfast. HE commuter likes rain; he likes drought; he likes sun; he likes clouds. There is nothing he doesn't like, except the city, and as he spends most of his time there, and when he isn't there, is always running in to dine and to amuse himself, it is very strange to me. He adores the loneliness of the country, but you see him almost breaking his neck to catch a train and get away from it. He can dwell by the hour on the alluring silences of the suburbs, but he is always in a turmoil to get to Broadway, which he despises.Perhaps he is anxious to mortify his spirit. Who knows? He hates asphalt, but as he checks his eternal rubbers at the station, you notice that he grows alert, and that he smiles ! No commuter has told me up to the present, that he is happiest in rubbers, but it would not surprise me a bit if he did. I should regard such confidence as another link in the Mun- chausen chain. You see, the country has a knack of staying wet for a long time—just to be different. When the city smiles, and is sunkissed, your property is damply conditioned, and you wear rubbers. At first, you rebel, but you wear them. Snow that falls pleasantly in March may— I say may—stay in the country until the Fourth of July. Snow really does love the country, and cannot make up its mind to leave it. There is no mere "week-end" business about snow. Nobody bothers about it, or tries to entertain it. It lies there perdu, as they say in romance, and just rots gradually, and you—you wear rubbers to wade through it. Eubbers become part of your life. Y...