The reason I left was significant. I spent, as a rule, seven or eight months in Munich, then a similar period in the United States, unless I traveled. I always returned to my apartment with such joy that if I arrived at night I did not go to bed lest I forget in sleep how overjoyed I was to get back to that stately and picturesque city, so prodigal with every form of artistic and aesthetic gratification. But that was just the trouble. For as long a time after my return as it took to write the book I had in mind I worked with the stored American energy I had within me; then for months and in spite of good resolutions and some self-anathema I did nothing. What was the use? The beautiful German city so full of artistic delight was made to live in, not to work in. The entire absence of poverty in that city of half a million inhabitants alone gave it an air of illusion, gave one the sense of being the guest of a hospitable monarch who only asked to provide a banquet for all that could appreciate. I look back upon Munich as the romance of my life, the only place on this globe that came near to satisfying every want of my nature. And that is the reason why, in a sort of panic, I abruptly pulled up stakes and left it for good and all. It is not in the true American idea to be too content; it means running to seed, a weakening of the will and the vital force. If I remained too long in that lovely land--so admirably governed that I could not have lost myself, or my cat, had I possessed one--I should in no long course yield utterly to a certain resentfully admitted tendency to dream and drift and live for pure beauty; finally desert my own country with the comfortable reflection: Why all this bustle, this desire to excel, to keep in the front rank, to find pleasure in individual work, when so many artistic achievements are ready-made for all to enjoy without effort? For--here is the point--an American, the American of today--accustomed to high speed, constant energy, nervous tenseness, the uncertainty, and the fight, cannot cultivate the leisurely German method, the almost scientific and impersonal spirit that informs every profession and branch of art. It is our own way or none for us Americans.