Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 July 1884 — Modern Nomads. [ARTICLE]

Modern Nomads.

The cyclic philosophers, if there are any, know that civilization moves in a circle, and that the freedom of emancipated culture comes round to the freedom of barbaric life. Originally no madic, we rove about until circumstances and the accumulation of our possessions compel us to settle down and take root in one place. Then the process of evolution goes on as wealth and uneasiness and dissatisfaction (which are names for modern culture) increase, until we become again in our desires nomadic. The cyclic philosopher, if he exists, says that the instinct for a fixed home is a “middle-class” instinct. The tramps like to roam, and the “higher classes” like also to roam, and to have many places of temporary residence. As we all belong to the higher class in this country, we all like to move about, and we do move ing to our several abilities. If we understand the process of evolution on this continent, it was from the nomads to the dwellers in commnnal-houses and villages, like the pueblos, and then to the possession of separate homes; or, as the Indian philanthropists say now,' to the holding of lands in severalty: As we become more highly developed and prosperous, we go back to a sort of communal existence in gigantic board-ing-houses (especially in summer) and an association of fiats, and those who can do so take a step further, and roam about in Europe, Africa, and Florida. The confessed advantage of a boardinghouse and fiat is that you can leave it at any time and start on your wanderings with no more preparation than an Indian needs in striking his wigwam, or a Tartar in saddling his horse. Comparatively few as yet of the very highly oivilized can put themselves on this absolutely nomadic basis; but once a year everybody must join this movement in some way. This is not the dictate of fashion, but the demand of health. Our puny ancestors used to stay at home the year round, except for an occasional family visit, or a modest week or two at some mineral spring, or a sojourn in the nighborhood of an oyster bed. But nobody can live now without an absolute change of air and scene at least twice a year. Even in New England, where there is a change of air every twenty-four hours, and if one will only stay still he will get in the course of the year as many different climates as any human system can digest, there is a semi-annual frenzy for going away from home. Those who have pleasant homes get weary of the routine of comfortable existence and the accumulating burden of an exhaustive modern house-keeping, and long for the meager accommodations of a gigantic boarding-house in some vast wilderness, or in some caravansaiy by the sea. It is the communal instinct breaking out again. There are those who say that this is owing to the malaria, that people need to change the kind of malaria, the city sort for the country sort, the sea-side kind for the mountain, and so on. But malaria, which is now nearly coextensive, and getting to be thought synonymous, with civilization, is not the moving cause. It is the nervous system, which is in the process of evolution round to the old condition in which a man could not keep still. It must be that health demands again an approach to the nomadic state. There are a hundred diseases which wealth allows us to cultivate, besides malaria, that demand a summer and winter change. —Charles Dudley Warner, in Harper's Magazine.