[Gutenberg 39144] • Under Four Administrations, from Cleveland to Taft / Recollections of Oscar S. Straus ...

Excerpt from Under Four Administrations: From Cleveland to Taft

I AM drawing these memories to a close in my log cabin in the primitive Maine woods, where my wife and I have been coming for rest and for fishing for the past twenty years. Here we renew our youth, and far from and crowds, near to nature, we realize anew how 18 required in order to be contented and happy. Here I am taken back to the memories of my childhood in the little town in Georgia where too our home was a log house, but for appearances had the luxurious outer and inner dressing of clap-boarding painted white. The logs of the upper story where we children played and slept had no covering, which pleased us all the more.

In a highly organized society, we are often attracted by pomp and circumstance, rather than by qualities of heart and mind, which after all are the true measure of enlightenment. Here in these woods, fair dealings and human relations are not regulated by statutes, but by the golden rule of conduct. We need not hide our possessions behind locked doors, honesty is the accepted rule of life; there are no treasures to hide and no bars to break.

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