My arrival in Jauregg in the evening at about eight o'clock three years ago gave rise, I think, to hopes which have not been fulfilled, on the contrary, my position has only worsened from the moment I set foot on the soil of Jauregg. One reason why I left the city, after all, had no doubt been the tremendous excess of people, among whom, because of the defenselessness of my physical and nervous centers, my lack of useful possibilities, I virtually threatened to suffocate. The thought as I woke up every morning of having to carry out my daily work under the weight of one million seven hundred thousand people almost killed me. So I saw the sudden decision to leave the city and accept the offer of my uncle, the Master of Jauregg, of joining the main office of his quarries, as a positive turn for my further development. Now, however, I see that conditions in the country are even more oppressive than those in the city and that four hundred people in the Jauregg Quarries are a much greater weight on the head of a person than one million seven hundred thousand in the city. And if I had thought, in contrast to the conditions in the city where within a space of almost ten years making new contacts had no longer been possible for me, to find such in the countryside, I soon was forced to realize that by entering into the service of the Jauregg Quarries I had made a mistake. Here no contacts are to be made with people because the conditions which prevail here and the people who live here in the Jauregg Quarries render the making of contacts such as I desire impossible. Above all the mistrust of everything developed here by each person as the highest art is to blame for the complete lack of contact between everyone employed in the Jauregg Quarries...
from, 'Jauregg'