At last the day arrived when he realized that he must develop wings, so he wrapped himself up in a cocoon; and while the metamorphosis was in process of development he had ample time to study Hamlet’s soliloquy.  It would mean a divorce from everything he held dear; a parting with his very soul.  It would mean the most sorrowful widowhood that could be imposed on man.  It would be equivalent to leaving this earth and taking up his abode in Mars.  He must sacrifice his love for the creek and the trail.  He must renounce his freedom and go into social slavery.  It was the emerging from the woods into the prairie; the coming from darkness into the light; a resurrection from the dead.  In future he must tread the smooth cement walk between cultivated lawns and plants, instead of climbing the rude, uneven trail obstructed by fallen trees and surrounded with vegetation in its wildest and most primeval forms.  He would walk the polished mahogany floor with patent boots, instead of the terrestrial one of his dug-out with obsolete overshoes.

But it must be.  For years he had been preparing and planning.  The object of his past had been a preparation for a better future; and why not?  Others enjoyed the good things of this life, and why not he?  Had he not paid the price.  Others reaped where they had not sown; he had sown, yes, sown in persecution, now he would reap in envious joy.  He had lived the first half of his life in squalor and darkness, that the latter half might be clean and cheerful.  When he had set out in his young days to live his pre-arranged history it was with an ambition to be wealthy, no matter by what means it should be acquired, so long as it was honest.  Now he was wealthy.  He had been poor; now he was rich, and money would put the world at his feet, which henceforth had been over his head.  He had been an animal; from now on he would be human.

But in his enthusiasm of development he forgot that he had grown attached to the wild, aboriginal life; that the parting might snap thongs and inflict wounds which even time would not mend or cure.  At times the creek would sing, and the trail would speak, but he banished the tempters from his mind to make room for his illuminating prospects, and his wings continued to grow towards maturity.  He struggled and freed himself from the cocoon.  He went to Vancouver a caterpillar and returned a butterfly, and the earthquake which accompanied his debut was equal to that which destroyed San Francisco.  He had sold his farm, which included the creek, and the trail, and the dug-out, and his salt pork barrel, for a song, and with his coin and icties about him, and in his lately acquired form, he invaded Clinton with an accentuated front.  The street was lined with people as though a procession had been going by—­all the sweet and familiar sounds and sights had been sacrificed criminally, and he was on his way to sip honey from flower to flower.