I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetnes… - E.B. White

Louis is a musician. Like most musicians, he is in need of money.

I’ve got a new friend, all right. But what a gamble friendship is! Charlotte is fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty — everything I don’t like. How can I learn to like her, even though she is pretty and, of course, clever?

Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don't have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.