SOURCE: "All the Comforts of Home," in The Antioch Review, Vol. 41, No. 4, Fall, 1983, pp. 409-20.

In the following essay, Lippman considers the notion of "comfort" as it applies to The Wind in the Willows.

There are times in life when innocence seems very far away, like something once dreamed and long forgotten. Almost forgotten. That residue in us that reminds us of another time, another state, never really vanishes, but lives to prick and disturb. The disturbance takes the form of a yearning for the simpler, the gentler, the aimless day, the cricket-loud back porch, the meadow more green and more yellow than nature herself planned. Idealized memories long since rigidified as picture postcards.

And there is nothing strange about this. Hazy reveries, half-remembered visions, do not a civilization make. We are better equipped for a life of toil without such encumbrances. If we are intelligent and opt...