There is a certain malady of the mind induced by too much of one thing.
Just as the body fed too long upon meat becomes a prey to that horrid
disease called scurvy, so the mind fed too long upon monotony succumbs
to the insidious mental ailment which the West calls "cabin fever."
True, it parades under different names, according to circumstances and
caste. You may be afflicted in a palace and call it ennui, and it may
drive you to commit peccadillos and indiscretions of various sorts. You
may be attacked in a middle-class apartment house, and call it various
names, and it may drive you to cafe life and affinities and alimony. You
may have it wherever you are shunted into a backwater of life, and lose
the sense of being borne along in the full current of progress. Be sure
that it will make you abnormally sensitive to little things; irritable
where once you were amiable; glum where once you went whistling about
your work and your play. It is the crystallizer of character, the acid
test of friendship, the final seal set upon enmity. It will betray your
little, hidden weaknesses, cut and polish your undiscovered virtues,
reveal you in all your glory or your vileness to your companions in
exile--if so be you have any.
If you would test the soul of a friend, take him into the wilderness
and rub elbows with him for five months! One of three things will surely
happen: You will hate each other afterward with that enlightened hatred
which is seasoned with contempt; you will emerge with the contempt
tinged with a pitying toleration, or you will be close, unquestioning
friends to the last six feet of earth--and beyond. All these things will
cabin fever do, and more. It has committed murder, many's the time. It
has driven men crazy. It has warped and distorted character out of all
semblance to its former self. It has sweetened love and killed love.
There is an antidote--but I am going to let you find the antidote
somewhere in the story.
Bud Moore, ex-cow-puncher and now owner of an auto stage that did not
run in the winter, was touched with cabin fever and did not know what
ailed him. His stage line ran from San Jose up through Los Gatos and
over the Bear Creek road across the summit of the Santa Cruz Mountains
and down to the State Park, which is locally called Big Basin. For
something over fifty miles of wonderful scenic travel he charged six
dollars, and usually his big car was loaded to the running boards. Bud
was a good driver, and he had a friendly pair of eyes--dark blue and
with a humorous little twinkle deep down in them somewhere--and a human
little smiley quirk at the corners of his lips. He did not know it, but
these things helped to fill his car.