Even his own philosophy as he had spoken it to Ted Thorne almost failed him that night in Chicago. Bernie had been too cruel. What was he groping for? What was this thing for which he hungered so blindly? What was this “small-town” business, fundamentally? Why was there such execration in being a provincial? Why did it bother him so? Why the necessity for climbing out of it? When he had “climbed out of it”, what then? He thought of Paris, Vermont, as he lay there on the bed. He thought of the view of Main Street from the Whitney House steps,—the same scene which Madelaine Theddon had found so depressing two years before. What was the matter with it? Why was it depressing? Why should it stand for all the things he was trying to shake from his fingers like sticky fly-paper? Was it lack of beauty in the place? No! Many parts of the town were beautiful. And hundreds of great cities were filled with sordid, depressing neighborhoods and quarters. It wasn’t a question of size. It wasn’t a question of beauty. What then? “Mediocrity, provincialism, small-townism,” he reasoned to himself, when philosophy was beginning to win out and his hurt brain and consciousness could function again. “It must be nothing more or less than the embodiment of standing still! Backwaters of life, peopled by those who fear the great, rugged currents, living to a standard and never daring or attempting to raise that standard—seeing no reason why they should! Lethargy—abiosis—existing from week to week, month to month, year to year in the same fashion and speed and gait as the week, the month, the year before. It’s the hideousness of standing all one’s life in one set of tracks when something inside shrieks to go on, to move, to improve, to be bigger, better, broader next year than last.” He arose and walked to his room. He wished he had old Caleb to talk it with.