Stephen Barton and I had many interesting talks together. With the cultural background of Europe he might have been a Rousseau or a Phalanisterian. As it was, he ran a "natural life" magazine which, though crude, benefited hundreds of people. What though it showed pictures of stupid men and women revealing, in poses rivalling the contortionist, their physical development acquired through his methods. * * * * * We would collect many people about us, to serve as a nucleus from which the future society of men and women would expand ... we would all live together as nearly naked as possible, because that was, after all, the only pure thing ... as Art showed, in its painting and sculpture. We would make our livings by the manufacture of all sorts of exercising apparatus and health-foods.... And so the world would be leavened with the new idea ... and men and women and little children would wander forth from the great, unclean, insanitary cities and live in clusters of pretty cottages ... naked, in good weather,--in bad, clothed for warmth and comfort, but not for shame. And the human body would become holy. * * * * * Meanwhile the petty, local fight had started which was to disrupt this hope of Barton's, and thwart its fulfillment forever. The town of Andersonville became jealous of the town of Cottswold because the latter handled most of the mail of our city and thereby had achieved the position of third or fourth class postoffice--I don't know exactly which. The struggle commenced when the two lone policemen of Andersonville began to arrest us--men and women--when we walked into their town for provisions, clad in our bathing suits ... later on, we were forbidden to run for exercise, in our bathing suits, on the fine, macadamised road that passed not far from our dwellings ... it shocked the motorists. Yet people came from far and near, just to be shocked. That seems to be the chief, most delightful, and only lawfully indulged emotion of the Puritan. Barton summoned us to a meeting, one night, and we held a long palaver over the situation. We decided to become more cautious, in spite of a few hotheads who advised defiance to the hilt.... And the beautiful girl that possessed such fine breasts could no longer row about on our little lake, naked to the waist. And we were requested to go far in among the trees for our nude sun-baths. The more radical of us moved entirely into the woods, despite the sand flies.... Then the affair simmered down to quietness--till the New York _World_ and the New York _Journal_ sent out their reporters.... After that, what with the lurid and insinuating stories printed, the state authorities began to look into the matter--and found no harm in us. But the Andersonville officials were out for blood. Cottswold was growing too fast for their injured civic pride and vanity.