He could recall companions who, living for pleasure, had by degrees lost all zest for the more or less wholesome amusements to which they had confined their efforts.

Some had become mere club loungers and tattlers; one or two had sunk into gross indulgence.

This had had its effect on him: he did not wish to grow red-faced, slothful, and fleshy, as they had done, nor to busy himself with trivialities until such capacities for useful work as he possessed had atrophied.
"Well," he said, "nobody could call this a good country for the pampered loafer." Flora smiled, and pointed out across the prairie.

In the foreground it was flecked with crimson flowers; farther back willow and poplar bluffs stretched in bluish smears across the sweep of grass that ran on beyond them toward the vivid glow of color on the skyline.

It was almost beautiful in the soft evening light, but it conveyed most clearly a sense of vastness and solitude.