Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/239

 was born a poet, was never weary of contrasting the peace of the forest with the turmoil of the world in which he had suffered so keenly, and which he could never quite forget. The glowing panegyrics which he pronounced upon the desert which had so hospitably sheltered him had been listened to by Robert in other days with scant attention. The world, which the priest had characterized as "barbarously sophistical" and "coldly refined," had been to him a pleasant place enough. He had found friends and amusements there, and had lived its life as thoughtlessly and gayly as he had lived the forest life. He had on the whole preferred the companionship of the wood people; but not because he found the world people heartless or cruel. It had been a mere matter of taste with him. Now, he saw things very differently. He listened to the words of the missionary with an unwonted attention; he realized how the pure-minded man must have been outraged by the shams and the lies, the selfishness and cruelty, of society. "The rottenness of the great world" had, to use his own words, "forced him to fly from it, as from a pestilential corpse, to the forest which God made as a refuge for man when every other refuge is denied him."

By sundown Robert had come back from his day's hunting, and the two men were sitting before