{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_17246/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_17246","id":"gutenberg_17246","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17246","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Travel Writing","Country life"],"text":"E-text prepared by Al Haines\n\n\n\nTHE QUEST OF THE SIMPLE LIFE\n\nby\n\nW. J. DAWSON\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNew York\nE. P. Dutton and Co.\n31 West Twenty-Third Street\n1907\nEdinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty\n\n\n\n\n\n  Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnim.\n      VIRG., Ecl. viii., l. 72.\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE HOUSE OF BONDAGE\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nGETTING THE BEST OUT OF LIFE\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nGETTING A LIVING, AND LIVING\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nEARTH-HUNGER\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nHEALTH AND ECONOMICS\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nIN SEARCH OF THE PICTURESQUE\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nI FIND MY COTTAGE\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nBUYING HAPPINESS\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nHOW WE LIVED\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nNEIGHBOURSHIP\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nTHE WOUNDS OF A FRIEND\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nAM I RIGHT?\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nTHE CITY OF THE FUTURE\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE HOUSE OF BONDAGE\n\nFor a considerable number of years I had been a resident in London,\nwhich city I regarded alternately as my Paradise and my House of\nBondage.  I am by no means one of those who are always ready to fling\nopprobrious epithets at London, such as 'a pestilent wen,' a cluster of\n'squalid villages,' and the like; on the contrary, I regard London as\nthe most fascinating of all cities, with the one exception of that city\nof Eternal Memories beside the Tiber.  But even Horace loved the\nolive-groves of Tivoli more than the far-ranged splendours of the\nPalatine; and I may be pardoned if an occasional vision of green fields\noften left my eye insensitive to metropolitan attractions.\n\nThis is a somewhat sonorous preface to the small matter of my story;\nbut I am anxious to elaborate it a little, lest it should be imagined\nthat I am merely a person of bucolic mind, to whom all cities or large\ncongregations of my fellow-men are in themselves abhorrent.  On the\ncontrary I have an inherent love of all cities which are something more\nthan mere centres of manufacturing industry.  The truly admirable city\nsecures interest, and even passionate love, not because it is a\ncongeries of thriving factories, but rather by the dignity of its\nposition, the splendour of its architecture, the variety and volume of\nits life, the imperial, literary, and artistic interests of which it is\nthe centre, and the prolongation of its history through tumultuous\nperiods of time, which fade into the suggestive shadows of antiquity.\nLondon answers perfectly to this definition of the truly admirable\ncity.  It has been the stage of innumerable historic pageants; it\npresents an unexampled variety of life; and there is majesty in the\nmere sense of multitude with which it arrests and often overpowers the\nmind.\n\nAs I have already, with an innocent impertinence, justified myself by\nHorace, so I will now justify myself by Wordsworth, whose famous sonnet\nwritten on Westminster Bridge is sufficient proof that he could feel\nthe charm of cities as deeply as the charm of Nature.  'Earth hath not\nanything to show more fair,' wrote Wordsworth, and of a truth London\nhas moods and moments of almost unearthly beauty, perhaps unparalleled\nby any vision that inebriates the eye in the most gorgeous dawn that\nflushes Alpine snows, or the most solemn sunset that builds a gate of\ngold across the profound depth of Borrowdale or Wastwater.  He who has\nseen the tower of St. Clement Danes swim up, like an insubstantial\nfabric, through violet mist above the roaring Strand; or the golden\nCross upon St. Paul's with a flag of tinted cloud flying from it; or\nthe solemn reaches of the Thames bathed in smoky purple at the slow\nclose of a summer's day, will know what I mean, and will (it is\npossible) have some memory of his own which will endorse the justness\nof my praise.\n\nFrom this exalted prelude I will at once descend to more prosaic\nmatter, leaving my reader, in his charity, to devise for me an apology\nwhich I have neither the wit nor the desire to invent for myself.  With\nthe best will in the world to speak in praise of cities it must be\nowned that the epic and lyric moments of London are infrequent.  As a\ncasual resident in London, a student and spectator, free to leave it\nwhen I willed, I could have been heartily content; but I, in common\nwith some insignificant millions of my fellow-creatures, was bound to\nlive in London as a means of living at all.  He is no true citizen who\nmerely comes up to town 'for the season,' alternating the pleasures of\ntown with those of the country; he alone is the true citizen who _must_\nlive amid the roar of the street all the year round, and for years\ntogether.  If I could choose for myself I would even now choose the\nlife of pleasant alternation between town and country, because I am\npersuaded that the true piquancy and zest of all pleasures lies in\ncontrast.  But fate orders these things for us, and takes no account of\nour desires, unless it be to treat them with habitual irony.  At\nfive-and-twenty the plain fact met me--that I must needs live in\nLondon, because my bread could be earned nowhere else.  No choice was\npermitted me; I must go where crowds were, because from the favour or\nnecessities of such crowds I must gather the scanty tithes which put\nfood upon my table and clothes upon my back.  When eminent writers,\nseated at ample desks, from which they command fair views of open\ncountry, denounce with prophetic fervour the perils which attend the\ngrowth of cities, they somewhat overlook the fact that the growth of\ncities is a sequence, alike ineluctable and pitiless, of the modern\nstruggle for existence.  One cannot be a lawyer, or a banker, a\nphysician or a journalist, without neighbours.  He can scarce be a\nliterary man in perfect sylvan solitude, unless his work is of such\nquality--perhaps I should have said such popularity--that it wins for\nhim immediate payment, or unless his private fortune be such that he\ncan pursue his aims as a writer with entire indifference to the\nhalf-yearly statements of his publisher.  In respect of the various\nemployments of trade and commerce, the case is still plainer.  Men must\nneeds go where the best wages may be earned; and under modern\nconditions of life it is as natural that population should flow toward\ncities, as that rivers should seek the sea.  These matters will be more\nparticularly discussed later on; it is enough for me to explain at\npresent that I was one of those persons for whom life in a city was an\nabsolute necessity.\n\nIt is not until one is tied to a locality that its defects become\napparent.  A street that interests the mind by some charm of populous\nvivacity when it is traversed at random and without object, becomes\ninexpressibly wearisome when it is the thoroughfare of daily duty.  My\ndaily duty took me through a long stretch of Oxford Street, which is a\nstreet not altogether destitute of some real claim to gaiety and\ndignity.  At first I was ready to concede this claim, and even to\nendorse it with enthusiasm; but from the day when I realised that\nOxford Street conducted me, by a force of inevitable gravitation, to a\ndesk in an office, I began to loathe it.  The eye became conscious of a\nhundred defects and incongruities; the tall houses rose like prison\nwalls; the resounding tumult of the streets seemed like the clamour of\ntormented spirits.  For the first time I began to understand why\nimaginative writers had often likened London to Inferno.\n\nI well remember by what a series of curious expedients I endeavoured to\nevade these sensations.  The most obvious was altogether to avoid this\nglittering and detested thoroughfare by making long detours through the\nmeaner streets which lay behind it; but this was merely to exchange one\nkind of aesthetic misery which had some alleviations for another kind\nwhich had none.  Sometimes I endeavoured to contrive a doubtful\nexhilaration from the contrast which these meaner streets afforded;\nsaying to myself, as I pushed my way through the costers' stalls of\nGreat James Street, 'Now you are exchanging squalor for magnificence.\nBe prepared for a surprise.'  But the ruse failed utterly, and my mind\nlaughed aloud at the pitiful imposture.  Another device was to create\npoints of interest, like a series of shrines along a tedious road,\nwhich should present some aspect of allurement.  There was a book-shop\nhere or an art-shop there; yesterday a biography of Napoleon was\nexhibited in the one, or a print of Murillo's 'Flight into Egypt,' in\nthe other; and it is become a matter of speculation whether they were\nthere to-day.  Just as a solitary sailor will beguile the tedium of\nempty days at sea by a kind of cribbage, in which the left hand plays\nagainst the right, so I laid odds for and against myself on such\ntrifles as these, and even went so far as to keep an account of my\nsuccesses and my failures.  Thus, for a whole month I was interested in\na person quite unknown to me, who wore an obsolete white beaver hat,\nappeared punctually at the corner of Bond Street at half-past five in\nthe afternoon, and spent half an hour in turning over the odd volumes\ndisplayed on the street board of a secondhand-book shop not far from\nOxford Circus.  His appearances were so planetary in their regularity\nthat one might have reckoned time by them.  Who he was, or what his\nobjects in life may have been, I never learned.  I never saw him walk\nbut in the one direction; I never saw him buy one of the many books\nwhich he examined: perhaps he also was afflicted with the tedium of\nLondon, and took this singular way of getting through a portion of his\nsterile day with a simulated interest.  At all events he afforded me an\ninterest, and when he vanished at the end of the month, Oxford Street\nonce more became intolerable to me.\n\nThese particulars appear so foolish and so trivial that most persons\nwill find them ridiculous, and even the most sympathetic will perhaps\nwonder why they are recorded.  They were, however, far from trivial to\nme.  The marooned seaman saves his sanity by cutting notches in a\nstick, the solitary prisoner by friendship with a mouse; and when life\nis reduced to the last exiguity of narrowness, the interests of life\nwill be narrow too.  No writer, whose work is familiar to me, has ever\nyet described with unsparing fidelity the kind of misery which lies in\nhaving to do precisely the same things at the same hour, through long\nand consecutive periods of time.  The hours then become a dead weight\nwhich oppresses the spirit to the point of torture.  Life itself\nresembles those dreadful dreams of childhood, in which we see the\nceiling and the walls of the room contract round one's helpless and\nimmobile form.  Blessed is he who has variety in his life: thrice\nblessed is he who has both freedom and variety: but the subordinate\ntoiler in the vast mechanism of a great city has neither.  He will sit\nat the same desk, gaze upon the same unending rows of figures, do, in\nfact, the same things year in and year out till his youth has withered\ninto age.  He himself becomes little better than a mechanism.  There is\nno form of outdoor employment of which this can be said.  The life of\nthe agricultural labourer, so often pitied for its monotony, is variety\nitself compared with the life of the commercial clerk.  The labourer's\ntasks are at least changed by the seasons; but time brings no such\ndiversion to the clerk.  It is this horrible monotony which so often\nmakes the clerk a foul-minded creature; driven in upon himself, he has\nto create some kind of drama for his instincts and imaginations, and\noften from the sorriest material.  When I played single-handed cribbage\nwith the few trivial interests which I knew, I at least took an\ninnocent diversion; and I may claim that my absurd fancies injured no\none, and were certainly of some service to myself.\n\nThe outsider usually imagines that great cities afford unusual\nopportunities of social intercourse, and when I first became a citizen\nI found this prospect enchanting.  I scanned the horizon eagerly for\nthese troops of friends which a city was supposed to furnish: quested\nhere and there for a responsive pair of eyes; made timid approaches\nwhich were repulsed; and, finally, after much experiment, had to admit\nthat the whole idea was a delusion.  No doubt it is true enough that,\nwith a settled and considerable income, and the power of entertaining,\nfriends are to be found in plenty.  But Grosvenor Square and Kentish\nTown do not so much as share a common atmosphere.  In the one it is a\npleasant tradition that the house door should be set wide to all comers\nwho can contribute anything to the common social stock; in the other,\nthe house door is jealously locked and barred.  The London clerk does\nnot care to reveal the shifts and the bareness of his domestic life.\nHe will reside in one locality for years without so much as seeking to\nknow his next-door neighbour.  He will live on cordial terms with his\ncomrade in the office, but will never dream of inviting him to his\nhome.  His instinct of privacy is so abnormal that it becomes mere\nchurlishness.  His wife, if he have one, usually fosters this spirit\nfor reasons of her own.  Her interests end with the clothing and\neducation of her children.  She does not wish for friends, does not\ncultivate the grace of hospitality, and is indifferent to social\nintercourse.  In short, the barbaric legend that an Englishman's house\nis his castle, is nowhere so much respected as in London.\n\nThe exhausting character of life in London, and the mere vastness of\nits geographical area, do something to produce this result.  Men who\nleave home early in the morning, sit for many hours in an office, and\nreach home late at night, soon lose both the instinct and desire for\nsocial intercourse.  They prefer the comfortable torpor of the\nfireside.  If some imperative need of new interests torments them, they\nseek relaxation in the music-hall or some other place of popular\nresort.  The art of conversation is almost extinct in a certain type of\nLondoner.  He knows nothing to converse about outside his business\ninterests, his family concerns, and perhaps the latest sensation of the\ndaily newspaper.  Those lighter flights of fancy, those delicate\ninnuendoes and allusions of implied experience or culture--all the\ngive-and-take of happily contending minds--all, indeed, that makes true\nconversation--is a science utterly unknown to him.  A certain\nsuperficial nimbleness of mind he does sometimes possess, but for all\nthat he is a dull creature, made dull by the limitations of his life.\n\nIf it should happen, as it often may, that such a man has some genuine\ninstinct for friendship, and has a friend to whom he can confide his\nreal thoughts, the chances are that his friend will be separated from\nhim by the mere vastness of London.  To the rural mind the metropolis\nappears an entity; in reality it is an empire.  A journey from the\nextreme north to the extreme south, from Muswell Hill to Dulwich, is\nless easily accomplished, and often less speedily, than a journey from\nLondon to Birmingham.  There is none of that pleasant 'dropping-in' for\nan evening which is possible in country towns of not immoderate radius.\nTime-tables have to be consulted, engagement-books scanned, serious\npreparations made, with the poor result, perhaps, of two hours' hurried\nintercourse.  The heartiest friendship does not long survive this\nmalignity of circumstance.  It is something to know that you have a\nfriend, obscurely hidden in some corner of the metropolis; but you see\nhim so rarely, that when you meet, it is like forming a new friendship\nrather than pursuing an old one.  It is little wonder that, under such\nconditions, visits grow more and more infrequent, and at last cease.  A\nmessage at Christmas, an intimation of a birth, a funeral card, are the\nsolitary relics and mementoes of many a city friendship not extinct,\nbut utterly suspended.\n\nI dwell on these obvious characteristics of London life, because in\ncourse of time they assumed for me almost terrifying dimensions.  After\nten years of arduous toil I found myself at thirty-five lonely,\nfriendless, and imprisoned in a groove of iron, whose long curves swept\non inevitably to that grim terminus where all men arrive at last.\nSometimes I chided myself for my discontent; and certainly there were\nmany who might have envied me.  I occupied a fairly comfortable house\nin a decayed terrace where each house was exactly like its neighbour,\nand had I told any one that the mere aspect of this grey terrace\noppressed me by its featureless monotony, I should have been laughed at\nfor my pains.  I believe that I was trusted by my employers, and if a\nmere automatic diligence can be accounted a virtue, I merited their\ntrust.  In course of time my income would have been increased, though\nnever to that degree which means competence or freedom.  To this common\nobject of ambition I had indeed long ago become indifferent.  What can\na few extra pounds a year bring to a man who finds himself bound to the\nsame tasks, and those tasks distasteful?  I was married and had two\nchildren; and the most distressing thought of all was that I saw my\nchildren predestined to the same fate.  I saw them growing up in\ncomplete destitution of those country sights and sounds which had made\nmy own youth delightful; acquiring the superficial sharpness of the\ncity child and his slang; suffering at times by the anaemia and\nlistlessness bred of vitiated air; high-strung and sensitive as those\nmust needs be whose nerves are in perpetual agitation; and when, in\nchance excursions to the country, I compared my children with the\nchildren of cottagers and ploughmen, I felt that I had wronged them, I\nsaw my children foredoomed, by an inexorable destiny, to a life at all\npoints similar with my own.  In course of time they also would become\nrecruits in the narrow-chested, black-coated army of those who sit at\ndesks.  They would become slaves without having known the value of\nfreedom; slaves not by capture but by heritage.  More and more the\nthought began to gather shape, Was I getting the most, or the best, out\nof life?  Was there no other kind of life in which toil was redeemed\nfrom baseness by its own inherent interest, no life which offered more\nof tranquil satisfaction and available, if humble, happiness?  Day by\nday this thought sounded through my mind, and each fresh discouragement\nand disability of the life I led gave it sharper emphasis.  At last the\ntime came when I found an answer to it, and these chapters tell the\nstory of my seeking and my finding.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nGETTING THE BEST OUT OF LIFE\n\nThe reader will perhaps say that the kind of miseries recounted in the\nprevious chapter are more imaginary than real.  Many thousands of\npeople subsist in London upon narrow means, and do not find the life\nintolerable.  They have their interests and pleasures, meagre enough\nwhen judged by a superior standard, but sufficient to maintain in them\nsome of the vivacity of existence.  No doubt this is true.  I remember\nbeing struck some years ago by the remark of a person of distinction,\nequally acquainted with social life in its highest and its lowest\nforms.  Mr. H., as I will call this person, said that the dismal\npictures drawn by social novelists of life among the very poor were\ntrue in fact, but wrong in perspective.  Novelists described what their\nown feelings would be if they were condemned to live the life of the\ndisinherited city drudge, rather than the actual feelings of the drudge\nhimself.  A man of education, accustomed to easy means, would suffer\ntortures unspeakable if he were made to live in a single room of a\npopulous and squalid tenement, and had to subsist upon a wage at once\nniggardly and precarious.  He would be tormented with that memory of\nhappier things, which we are told is a 'sorrow's crown of sorrow.'  But\nthe man who has known no other condition of life is unconscious of its\nmisery.  He has no standard of comparison.  An environment which would\ndrive a man of refinement to thoughts of suicide, does not produce so\nmuch as dissatisfaction in him.  Hence there is far more happiness\namong the poor than we imagine.  They see nothing deplorable in a lot\nto which they have become accustomed; they are as our first parents\nbefore their eyes were opened to a knowledge of good or evil; or, to\ntake a less mythical illustration, they are as the contented savage, to\nwhom the refinements of European civilisation are objects of ridicule\nrather than envy.\n\nI quote this opinion for what it is worth; but it has little relevance\nto my own case.  I am the only competent judge of my own feelings.  I\nknow perfectly well that these feelings were not shared by men who\nshared the conditions of my own life.  There was a clerk in the same\noffice with me who may be taken as an example of his class.  Poor\nArrowsmith--how well I recall him!--was a little pallid man, always\nneatly if shabbily dressed, punctual as a clock, and of irreproachable\ndiligence.  He was verging on forty, had a wife and family whom I never\nsaw, and an aged mother whom he was proud to support.  He was of quite\nimperturbable cheerfulness, delighted in small jokes, and would chatter\nlike a daw when occasion served him.  He had never read a book in his\nlife; his mind subsisted wholly upon the halfpenny newspapers.  He had\nno pleasures, unless one can count as such certain Bank Holiday\nexcursions to Hampstead Heath, which were performed under a heavy sense\nof duty to his family.  He had lived in London all his days, but knew\nmuch less of it than the country excursionist.  He had never visited\nSt. Paul's or Westminster Abbey; had never travelled so far as Kew or\nGreenwich; had never been inside a picture gallery; and had never\nattended a concert in his life.  The pendulum of his innocuous\nexistence swung between the office and his home with a uniform\nmonotony.  Yet not only was he contented with his life, but I believe\nthat he regarded it as entirely successful.  He had counted it a great\npiece of luck when he had entered the office as a youth of sixteen, and\nthe glow of his good fortune still lingered in his mind at forty.  He\nregarded his employers with a species of admiring awe not always\naccorded to kings.  The most violent social democrat could have made\nnothing of Arrowsmith; there was not the least crevice in his heart in\nwhich the seed of discontent could have found a lodgment.  As for\nmaking any question of whether he was getting the best or most out of\nlife, Arrowsmith was as incapable as a kitten.\n\nThe virtues of Arrowsmith, which were in their way quietly heroic,\nimpressed me a good deal; but his abject contentment with the\nlimitations of his lot appalled me.  I felt a dread grow in me lest I\nshould become subdued to the element in which I worked as he was.  I\nasked myself whether a life so destitute of real interests and\npleasures was life at all?  I made fugitive attempts to allure the\nlittle man into some realms of wider interest, but with the most\ndiscouraging results.  I once insisted on taking him with me for a day\nin Epping Forest.  He came reluctantly, for he did not like leaving his\nwife at home, and it seemed that no persuasion could induce her to\nundertake so adventurous a jaunt.  He was no walker, and half a dozen\nmiles along the Forest roads tired him out.  By the afternoon even his\ncheerfulness had vanished; he gazed with blank and gloomy eyes upon the\nwide spaces of the woodland scenery.  He did not regain his spirits\ntill we drew near Stratford on the homeward journey.  At the first\nsight of gas-lit streets he brightened up, and I am persuaded that the\nrancid odours of the factories at Bow were sweeter in his nostrils than\nall the Forest fragrances.  I never asked him again to share a pleasure\nfor which I now perceived he had no faculty; but I often asked myself\nhow long it would take for a city life to extirpate in me the taste by\nwhich Nature is appreciated, as it had in Arrowsmith.\n\nI have taken Arrowsmith as an example of the narrowness of interest\ncreated by a city life, and it would be easy to offer an apology for\nhim, which I, for one, would most heartily endorse.  The poor fellow\nwas very much the creature of his circumstances.  But this was scarcely\nthe case with another man I knew, whose circumstances, had he known how\nto use them, might have afforded him the opportunity of many cultivated\ntastes.  He was the son of a small farmer, born in the same village as\nmyself.  By some curious accident he was flung into the vortex of\nLondon life at seventeen, and became a clerk in a reputable firm of\nstockbrokers in Throgmorton Street.  He rose rapidly, speculated\nlargely and successfully for himself, became a partner, and was rich at\nthirty.  I used to meet him occasionally, for he never forgot that we\nhad sat upon the same bench at school.  I can see him still;\nwell-fleshed and immaculately dressed; his waistcoat pockets full of\ngold; a prop of music-halls, a patron of expensive restaurants;\nflashing from one to the other in the evening hours in swift hansoms; a\nman envied and admired by a host of clerks in Throgmorton Street to\nwhom he appeared a kind of Napoleon of finance.  I will confess that I\nmyself was a little dazzled by his careless opulence.  When he took me\nto dine with him he thought nothing of giving the head waiter a\nsovereign as a guarantee of careful service, or of sending another\nsovereign to the master of the orchestra with a request for some\nparticular piece of music which he fancied.  He once confided to me\nthat he had brought off certain operations which had made him the\npossessor of eighty thousand pounds.  To me the sum seemed immense, but\nhe regarded it as a bagatelle.  When I suggested certain uses for it,\nsuch as retirement to the country, the building of a country house, the\ncollection of pictures or of a library, he laughed at me.  He informed\nme that he never spent more than a single day in the country every\nyear; it was spent in visiting his father at the old farm.  He loathed\nthe quiet of the country, and counted his one day in the year an\ninfliction and a sacrifice.  Books and pictures he had cared for once,\nbut as he now put it, he had 'no use for them.'  It seemed that all his\neighty thousand pounds was destined to be flung upon the great roulette\ntable of stock and share speculations.  It was not that he was\navaricious; few men cared less for money in itself; but he could not\nlive without the excitement of speculation.  'I prefer the air of\nThrogmorton Street to any air in the world,' he observed.  'I am\nunhappy if I leave it for a day.'  So far as knowledge of or interest\nin London went, he was not a whit better than poor shabby Arrowsmith.\nHis London stretched no further than from the Bank to Oxford Circus,\nand the landmarks by which he knew it were restaurants and music-halls.\n\nThe man seemed so satisfied with everything about his life that it was\na kind of joy to meet him.  The sourness of my own discontent was\ndissolved in the alembic of his joviality.  Yet it was certain that he\nlived a life of the most torturing anxiety.   There were recurring\nperiods when his fortune hung in the balance, and his financial\nsalvation was achieved as by fire.  When he sat silent for a moment,\nstrange things were written on his face.  Haggard lines ran across the\nbrow; the hollows underneath the eyes grew deep; and one could see that\nblack care sat upon his shoulders.  There was a listening posture of\nthe head, as of one apprehensive of the footfall of disaster, and\nthough he was barely forty, his hair was white.  What happened to him\nfinally I do not know.  I missed him for a year or two; inquired at the\nhotel where he had lived and found him gone; and I thought I read in\nthe sarcastic smile of the hotel-manager more knowledge than he was\nwilling to communicate.  I imagine that he went down in some financial\nstorm, like ships at sea that are heard of no more; the Napoleon of\nfinance had somewhere found his Waterloo.  The reflection is\ninevitable; what had he got out of life after all?  He had won neither\npeace nor honour; he had known nothing of the finer joys or tastes; he\nhad enjoyed no satisfying pleasures; such triumph as he had known had\nbeen the brief triumph of the gambler.  Upon the whole I thought the\nnarrow tedious life of Arrowsmith the worthier.\n\nReflections of this nature are usually attributed to mere envy or\ncontempt of wealth, which is a temper not less sordid than a love of\nwealth.  For my part I can but profess that I feel for wealth neither\nenvy nor contempt.  On the contrary, I love to imagine myself wealthy,\nand I flatter myself--as most poor men do--that I am a person\npeculiarly fitted by nature to afford a conspicuous example of how\nwealth should be employed.  I like to dramatise my fancies, and the\nmore impossible these fancies are, the more convincing is the drama\nthat can be educed from them.  Thus I have several times built palaces\nwhich have rivalled the splendours of the Medici; I have administered\ngreat estates to the entire satisfaction of my tenants; I have\nestablished myself as the Maecenas of art and literature; and were I\never called to play these parts in reality, I am convinced that my\ncompetence would secure applause.  The point at which I stick, however,\nis this: rich men rarely do these things.  It is the pursuit of wealth,\nrather than wealth itself, that is their pleasure.  Let us suppose the\ncase of a man who has toiled with undivided mind for thirty years to\nacquire a fortune; will it not be usually found that in the struggle to\nbe rich he has lost those very qualities which make riches worth\npossessing?  He buys his estate or builds his house; but there is\nlittle pleasure in the business.  He is the mere slave of land-agents,\nthe puppet of architects and upholsterers.  He has no original taste to\nguide or interest him: what he once had has perished long ago in the\ndreary toil of money-grubbing.  The men who build or decorate his house\nhave a certain pleasure in their work; all that he does is to pay them\nfor being happy.  If he should adopt the rich man's hobby of collecting\npictures or a library, he rarely enjoys a higher pleasure than the mere\nlust of possession.  He buys what he is told to buy, without\ndiscrimination; he has no knowledge of what constitutes rarity or\nvalue; and most certainly he knows nothing of those excitements of the\nquest which make the collection of articles of vertu a pursuit so\nfascinating to the man of trained judgment but moderate means.  And, as\nif to complete the irony of the situation, he is after all but the\ninfrequent tenant of the treasure-house which he has built; the blinds\nare drawn half the year; the splendid rooms are seen by no wiser eyes\nthan those of his butler and his housekeeper; and his secretary, if he\nbe a man of taste and education, draws the real dividend of pleasure\nfrom all these rare and costly things which Dives has accumulated.\nDives is in most cases little more than the man who pays the bill for\nthings which other folk enjoy.\n\nLet Dives be accounted then a public benefactor, we may say; perhaps\nso, but the question still remains, does Dives get the most and best\nout of life?  The obvious answer is that the best things of life are\nnot to be bought with money; it would be nearer the truth to quote the\nprophetic paradox, they are bought 'without money and without price.'\nI was present once at a dinner given by a millionaire newspaper\nproprietor to a crowd of journalists, on the occasion of the founding\nof a new magazine.  The millionaire ate little, spoke little, and sat\nthroughout the feast with an anxious cloud upon his brow.  I recognised\nthe same furtive look of apprehension in his eyes that I had seen in\nthe eyes of my stock-broking friend long before.  As I glanced round\nthe room I found myself able to pick out all the men of wealth by that\nsame look.  It would seem that the anxieties of getting money only\nbeget the more torturing anxiety of how to keep it.  That, I am\npersuaded, was the dominant thought of my millionaire host throughout\nthe meal; he knew the fear and fever of the gambler risking an enormous\nstake, the agitation of the soldier on the eve of a battle, in which\nvictory is highly problematical.  But that crowd of hungry journalists,\nhow they did eat!  What laughter sat on those boyish faces, what zest\nof life, what capacity of pleasure!  There was not one of them whose\ndaily bread was not precarious; not one perhaps who had a decent\nbalance at the bank; yet they were so gay, so resolutely cheerful, so\nfrankly interested in life and in themselves, that I could fancy those\ngloomy eyes at the head of the table watched them with a sort of envy,\nI think there must be something fatal to gaiety in the mere\nresponsibilities of wealth; I am sure that there is something\ncorrupting in the labours of its acquisition.  I think I had rather be\na vagrant, with a crust in my knapsack, a blue sky above me, and the\nadventurous road before me, than look upon the world with a pair of\neyes so laughterless as his who was our host that night.\n\nAgain I protest that I make no railing accusation against wealth in\nitself.  I am so far convinced of the truly beneficent utilities of\nwealth, that I would quite willingly take the risks of a moderate\ncompetence, should any one be disposed to make experiment with my\nvirtues.  There is some magnanimity in this offer, for I can no more\nforetell the effects of the bacillus of wealth upon my moral nature,\nthan can the physician who offers his body for inoculation with the\ngerm of some dire disease that science may be served.  It argues some\nlack of imagination among millionaires that it has occurred to no one\nof the tribe to endow a man instead of an institution, if it were only\nby way of change.  It would at least prove an interesting experiment,\nand it would be cheap at the price of the few unmissed thousands which\nthe millionaire would pay for it.  To such an experiment I would be\nwilling to submit, if it were only to ascertain whether I have been\nright or wrong in my supposition that I am better qualified by nature\nthan my fellows for the right administration of wealth; but there is\none thing I would never do, I would never undertake that laborious\nquest of wealth, which robs men of the power to enjoy it when it is\nobtained.\n\nIt is there that the pinch comes; granted that some degree of\ncompetence is needed for a free and various use of life, is it worth\nwhile to destroy the power of living in attaining the means to live?\nWhat is a man better for his wealth if he does not know how to use it?\nA fool may steal a ship, but it takes a wise man to navigate her\ntowards the islands of the Blest.  I am told sometimes that there is a\nromance in business; no doubt there is, but it is pretty often the\nromance of piracy; and the pleasures of the rich man are very often\nnothing better than the pleasures of the pirate: a barbaric wading in\ngold, a reckless piling up of treasure, which he has not the sense to\nuse.  As long as there are shouting crews upon the sea and flaming\nships, he is happy; but give him at last the gold which he has striven\nto win, and he knows nothing better than to sit like the successful\npirate in a common ale-house, and make his boast to boon companions.  I\nbelieve that the dullest men in all the world are very rich men; and I\nhave sometimes thought that it cannot need a very high order of\nintelligence to acquire wealth, since some of the meanest of mankind\nappear to prosper at the business.  A certain vulpine shrewdness of\nintelligence seems the thing most needed, and this may coexist with a\ngeneral dulness of mind which would disgrace a savage.\n\nThe thing that is least perceived about wealth is that all pleasure in\nmoney ends at the point where economy becomes unnecessary.  The man who\ncan buy anything he covets, without any consultation with his banker,\nvalues nothing that he buys.  There is a subtle pleasure in the\nextravagance that contests with prudence; in the anxious debates which\nwe hold with ourselves whether we can or cannot afford a certain thing;\nin our attempts to justify our wisdom; in the risk and recklessness of\nour operations; in the long deferred and final joy of our possession;\nbut this is a kind of pleasure which the man of boundless means never\nknows.  The buying of pictures affords us an excellent illustration on\nthis point.  Men of the type of Balzac's _Cousin Pons_ attain to\nrapture in the process because they are poor.  They have to walk weary\nmiles and wait long weeks to get upon the track of their treasure; to\nuse all their knowledge of art and men to circumvent the malignity of\ndealers; to experience the extremes of trepidation and of hope; to deny\nthemselves comforts, and perhaps food, that they may pay the price\nwhich has at last, after infinite dispute, reached an irreducible\nminimum; and the pleasure of their possession is in the ratio of their\npains.  But the man who enters a sale-room with the knowledge that he\ncan have everything he wishes by the signing of a cheque feels none of\nthese emotions.  It seems to me that money has lost more than half its\nvalue since cheques became common.  When men kept their gold in iron\ncoffers, lock-fast cupboards, or a pot buried in an orchard, there was\nsomething tangible in wealth.  When it came to counting out gold pieces\nin a bag, men remembered by what sweat of mind or body wealth was won,\nand they had a sense of parting with something which was really theirs.\nBut a cheque has never yet impressed me with the least sense of its\nintrinsic value.  It is a thing so trivial and fragile that the mind\nrefuses to regard it as the equivalent of lands and houses and solid\nbullion.  It is a thing incredible to reason that with a stroke of the\npen a man may sign away his thousands.  If cheques were prohibited by\nlaw, and all payments made in good coin of the realm, I believe we\nshould all be much more careful in our expenditure, for we should have\nat least some true symbol of what expenditure implies.\n\nIn an ideal state all incomes beyond 10,000 pounds per year should be\nprohibited.  Almost all the real luxuries of life may be enjoyed on\nhalf that sum; and even this is an excessive estimate.  Such a\nregulation would be of vast advantage to the rich, simply because it\nwould impose some limit at which economy commenced.  They would then\nbegin to enjoy their wealth.   Avarice would decline, for obviously it\nwould not be worth while to accumulate a larger fortune than the State\npermitted.  We might also expect some improvement in manners, for there\nwould be no room for that vulgar ostentation in which excessive wealth\ndelights.   If a man chose to exceed the limit which the law prescribed\nhe would do so as a public benefactor; for, of course, the excess of\nwealth would be applied to the good of the community, in the relief of\ntaxation, the adornment of cities, or the establishment of libraries\nand art-galleries.  It would no doubt be objected that the great\nhistoric houses of the aristocracy could not be maintained on such an\nincome; five thousand pounds a year would hardly pay the servants on a\ngreat estate, and provide the upkeep of a mansion.  But in this case\nthe State would become the custodian of such houses, which would be\ntreated as national palaces.  It is by no means improbable that their\npresent owners would be glad to be rid of them on generous terms, which\nprovided for a nominal ownership and an occasional occupation.  However\nthis may be, it is certain that the rich would profit by the change,\nfor their chance of getting the most and best out of life would be much\nincreased by the limit put upon cupidity and ostentation.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nGETTING A LIVING, AND LIVING\n\nGetting the best and most out of life, I take to be the most rational\nobject of human existence.  Even religion, although it affects to scorn\nthe phrase, admits the fact; for no man would be religious unless he\nwere convinced that he thereby added something to his store of\nhappiness.  It is a matter of temperament whether a man treats religion\nas a panacea for his mortal troubles, or the 'Open Sesame' of brighter\nworlds, but it is quite certain that he regards it as a means of\nhappiness.  I cannot doubt that the anchorites, ascetics, and\ncloistered nuns of mediaeval times were happy in their own way,\nalthough it was in a fashion that appears to us highly foolish and\nabsurd.  Even a St. Stylites had his consolations; he was kept warm\nupon his pillar by the comfortable sense of his superiority to his\nwicked fellow-creatures.\n\nTo get the best out of life there must be some adequate fulfilment of\none's best self.  Man is a bundle of tastes and appetites, some lofty,\nand some ignoble, but all crying out for satisfaction.  Wisdom lies in\nthe discernment of essentials; in just discrimination between false and\ntrue tastes.  Man has been a long time upon the earth, and he has spent\nhis time for the most part in one ceaseless experiment, viz., how he\nmay become a satisfactory creature in his own eyes.  All civilisations\nconverge upon this point; and we maybe sure that, in their lonely hours\nof meditation, the fantastic warder on the great wall of China, and the\nRoman soldier pacing to and fro in the porticoes of the Palatine, had\nmuch the same thoughts.  Whosoever speaks to man on the art of becoming\nhappy is secure of a hearing; even though he be the vilest of quacks he\nwill have his following, even though he were the worst of scoundrels\nsome will take him for a prophet.  In short, we are all the dupes of\nhope, and it needs some experience to assure us that our only real hope\nis in ourselves.  In our own hearts lies the Eldorado which we scour\nthe world to find; could we but fulfil our best selves we should ask no\nother happiness.\n\nThe question that soon comes to obtrude itself upon the mind of a\nthoughtful man in a great city, is this old persistent question of\nwhether his method of life is such as to answer to the ideal of\nfulfilling his best self?  It seemed to me that the inhabitants of\ncities were too busy getting a living to have time to live.\n\nLet us take the life of the average business man by way of example.\nSuch a man will rise early, sleep late, and eat the bread of\ncarefulness, if he means to succeed.  He will probably live--or be said\nto live--in some suburb more or less remote from the roaring centre of\naffairs.  The first light of the winter dawn will see him alert;\nbreakfast is a hurried passover performance; a certain train must be\ncaught at all hazard to digestion, and the most leisured moments of the\nday will be those he passes in the railway carriage.  Once arrived at\nhis office he must plunge into the vortex of business; do battle with a\nthousand rivalries and competitions; day after day must labour in the\nsame wearisome pursuits, content, perhaps, if at the end of the year he\nshall have escaped as by a miracle commercial shipwreck.  He will come\nback to his residence, night after night, a tired man; not pleasantly\nwearied with pursuits which have exercised his complete powers, but\ntired to the point of dejection by the narrowness and monotony of his\npursuits.  I say he returns to his residence; I scorn to say his home,\nfor the house he rents is merely the barrack where he sleeps.  Of the\nlife that goes on within this house, which is nominally his, he knows\nnothing.  In its daily ordering, or even in its external features, he\nhas no part.  He has chosen no item of its furniture; he has had no\nhand in its decoration; he has but paid the tradesmen's bills.  His\nchildren scarcely know him; they are asleep when he goes off in the\nmorning, and asleep when he returns at night; he is to them the strange\nman who sits at the head of the table once a week and carves the Sunday\njoint.  It is well for them if they have a mother who possesses gifts\nof government, sympathy, and patient comprehension, for it is clear\nthat they have no father.  He gets a living, and perhaps in time an\nample living; but does he live?\n\nIt may be said that this picture is exaggerated; on the contrary, I\nthink it is under-estimated.  I have myself known men whose average\ndaily absence from 'home' is twelve hours; they disappear by the eight\no'clock morning train, and in times of special business pressure it is\nnot far from midnight when they return.  The trains, cabs, and public\nvehicles of London convey, day by day, one million three hundred\nthousand of these homeless men to their employments in the city.  Here\nand there a wise man may be found who resents this tyranny of\nsuburbanism.  I know a young business man, who also chances to possess\ndomestic instincts, for whom suburbanism grew so intolerable that he\ntook a house in the very heart of London, that he might lunch and dine\nwith his wife at his own table without neglecting his business\ninterests.  He was a wise man, but he is the only one I know.  Counting\nthe time passed at luncheon and dinner, the later departure in the\nmorning, and the earlier arrival at night, he is the clear gainer, day\nby day, of three to four hours of domestic intercourse.  At the end of\nthe week he has thus added to the credit of his family life\nfour-and-twenty hours; at the end of a year he has enjoyed more than\nfifty full days of domestic intercourse which would have been forfeited\nhad he continued to live at Surbiton.  He has also saved money, for\nthough the rent he pays in Central London is more than the rent he paid\nat Surbiton, yet he has saved the expense of his season-ticket,\nlunches, and occasional dinners at a club or restaurant, and cabs to\nWaterloo when he was pressed for time.  But it is quite vain to urge\nsuch considerations on the average man of business.  He would tell you\nfrankly that nothing would induce him to live in a house within a\nstone's-throw of Leicester Square, although it is a far better built\nand more comfortable house than the gimcrack villa which he rents at\nSurbiton.  The gain in domestic intercourse would not attract him, for\nhe has long ago lost taste for it; and the privilege of lunching with\nhis family would repel him, for he is deeply suspicious of the virtues\nof domestic cookery.  Nor, I suppose, would it influence him to tell\nhim that by living in Central London, he could command without\ninconvenience the full attractions of the town, such as concerts,\nlectures, theatres, or those special assemblies which are\nrepresentative of London life; for he desires nothing of the kind.\nConsiderations of economy might affect him, but with all his skill at\nfigures he seldom has the sense to see that the moiety of income paid\nyearly to the railway, by himself and his family, goes a long way\ntoward the doubling of his rent.  In short, suburbanism is his fetish;\nit is the keynote of his poor respectability, and he is not to be\ndiverted from it by any reasons which a sane man would regard as\nconsiderable, if not imperative.\n\nThe most usual excuse of suburbanism is that it is a good thing for the\nwife and family of a business man, though it is a bad thing for him.\nIt is singular that no one seems to recognise the gross selfishness of\nthis plea.  It is like the plea of the vivisectionist, that vivisection\nis a bad thing for a rabbit, but a very good thing for humanity, since\nhumanity profits by the torture of the rabbit.  But for my part I doubt\nwhether there is any real profit to anybody in suburbanism.  There is a\ntown life, and there is a country life, each of which has peculiar\ncompensations of its own; but suburbanism is a miserable compromise,\nwhich like most compromises combines not the qualities but the defects\nof two antagonisms.  Its worst effect is that it sets up in one family\ntwo standards of life, which have nothing in common.  After a while it\nmust happen that there is a serious estrangement of taste, and it is\nnot surprising if this often leads to a much more serious estrangement\nof affection.  The air of Surbiton may be a little fresher than the air\nof Bloomsbury, but what does this count for if the atmosphere of the\nhearth be poisoned?  Moreover, among the Anglo-Saxon peoples women are\nnot encouraged to take any vital interest in the pursuits of their\nhusbands as they are among the Latin races.  I should not be surprised\nto find that half the women in the London suburbs do not know the\nprecise nature of their husbands' occupations.  A French woman of the\nbourgeois class often has a real aptitude for business.  She can manage\na shop, keep accounts, take an interest in markets, and in all\nquestions of commercial enterprise she is the confidante, and often the\nadviser, of her husband.  Your English woman of the same class prides\nherself rather on her total ignorance of business.  It is probable that\nin twenty years of married life she has not once visited the warehouse\nor the office where her husband earns the income which she spends.  She\nis 'provided for without the sweet sense of providing.'  She sees her\nhusband elated or depressed by things that have happened in the city;\nbut to her the reasons of his hope or fear are not communicated, nor\nwould she understand them if they were.  His mind speaks a language\nforeign to her; his daily operations in the city have for her only the\nremote interest of things that have happened in a foreign country,\nwhich appear too unreal to excite any sincere sympathy or apprehension.\nIs this divided life good for either party?\n\nWere some curious observer from another planet to arrive in London, I\nthink few things would appear to him so extraordinary as a London\nsuburb at noonday.  By ten o'clock in the morning at latest he would\nsee it denuded of all its male inhabitants.  Like that fabulous realm\nof Tennyson's _Princess_, it is a realm inhabited by women; and the\nonly male voice left in the land is the voice of the milk-boy on his\nrounds, the necessary postman, and the innocuous grocer's tout.  There\nis something of the 'hushed seraglio' in these miles of trim houses,\nfrom whose doors and windows only female faces look out.  An air of\nsensible bereavement lies upon the land.  Woman, deprived of her lord\nand natural complement, cuts but a poor figure anywhere, but nowhere so\npoor as in a wide realm populous with grass widows.  By what interests\nor avocations, or by what delinquency of duty the tedious hours are\ncheated, is not revealed to any male philosopher; but he is a poor\nobserver who does not recognise something unnatural in this one-sided\nlife.  A few miles away the loud Niagara of London runs swift, and the\nair vibrates with all the tumult of the strenuous life of man; but here\nthe air is dead, unwinnowed by any clamorous wind, unshaken by any\nplanetary motion.  I cannot think this narrow separated life good for\nwoman, and I am surprised that in these days when woman claims equal\nprivilege with man, she will submit to it.  In the act of getting a\nliving she also suffers, and loses something of the power to live.  If\nthe distraction of the city hurts the man she is not less injured by\nthe torpor of the suburb.  Let a woman be never so intelligent and\nkeenly wrought, a suburb will soon enfeeble her, and take the fine edge\noff her spirit.  Left to the sole society of nursemaids and cooks in\nher own house for many hours a day; to the companionship of women\noutside her house, whose conversation is mainly gossip about household\ndifficulties; to the tame diversions of shopping at the nearest\nemporium; what power of interest in the larger things of life can be\nexpected of her?  The suburb is her cloister, and she the dedicated\nbride of littleness.\n\nThis seems a hard saying, but it can easily be verified by observation.\nI have myself known women, rich enough to keep a carriage, who had\nnever been so far as Hyde Park, never visited the National Gallery, and\nnever sought any finer music than could be furnished by a local\nconcert.  For them, London as an entity did not exist.  This\nparochialism of suburban life is its most surprising feature.  There is\nafter all some excuse for Mr. Grant Allen's description of London as an\naggregation of villages, when we find that so vast a number of\nLondoners really live the life of villagers.  But it is not patriotism\nthat binds them to the soil, nor local pride, as is the case with\ngenuine villagers; it is rather sheer inertia.  Such pride, if it\nexisted, might do much for the regeneration of great cities, by\ncreating a series of eager and intelligent communities, which would vie\nwith one another in civic self-improvement; but this is just the kind\nof pride which does not exist.  No one cares how his suburb is\nmisgoverned, so long as rates are not too exorbitant.  A suburb will\nwake into momentary life to curb the liberal programmes of the\nschool-board, or to vote against the establishment of a free library; a\ngross self-interest being thus the only variation of its apathy.  It\nsoon falls asleep again, dulled into torpor by the fumes of its own\nintolerant smugness.  For much of this the element of family separation\nin suburban life is answerable.  The men pay their rates and house-rent\nat Surbiton, but they live their real lives within hearing of the bell\nof St. Paul's; how should they take any interest in Surbiton?  After\nall, Surbiton is to them but a vast caravansary, where they are lodged\nand fed at night; and one does not inquire too closely into the\ninternal amenities of his hotel so long as the food is tolerable, and\nthe bed clean.\n\nSuburbanism is, however, but a branch, though an important branch, of\nthe larger question, whether in cities men do not ultimately sacrifice\nthe finer qualities and joys of life to the act of getting a living.\nIt will perhaps be said that the man with a true genius for business\nmust in any case live in a city; that he is not discontented with the\nconditions of his life; that, all things being considered, he is\nprobably living the kind of life for which he is best fitted.  May not\na writer, who is presumably a person of studious and quiet habits,\nmisinterpret the life of a business man precisely in the same way that\nhe misinterprets the life of the poor, by applying to it his own\nstandards instead of measuring it by theirs?  Business, for the man of\nbusiness genius, is more than an employment; it is his epic, his\nromance, his adventurous crusade.  He brings to it something of the\nstatesman's prescience, the diplomatist's sagacity, the great captain's\npower of organising victory.  His days are battles, his life a long\ncampaign; and if he does not win the spoil of kingdoms, he does fight\nfor commercial supremacy, which comes to much the same thing.  No doubt\nthere is much truth in this putting of the case, though it really begs\nthe main question.  But even if we grant that in the larger operations\nof commerce a certain type of genius is required, we must remember that\nthe men of this order are few in number.  Every lord of commerce is\nattended by a vast retinue of slaves.  Very few of these humble\nservitors of commerce can ever hope to rise from the ranks into supreme\ncommand.  They must labour to create the wealth of the successful\nmerchant as a private soldier suffers wounds and hardships that fame\nmay crown his general.  Do these men share the higher privileges of\nlife?  Is not life with them the getting of a living rather than\nliving?  Nay, more; is it not the getting of a living for some one else?\n\nThe merchant-prince fulfils himself, for his highest powers of\nintelligence are daily taxed to the uttermost; but the case is very\ndifferent with that vast army of subordinates, whom we see marching\nevery morning in an infinite procession to the various warehouses and\noffices of London.  I have often wondered at their cheerfulness when I\nhave recollected the nature of their life.  For they bring to their\ndaily tasks not the whole of themselves, but a mere segment of\nthemselves; some small industrious faculty which represents them, or\nmisrepresents them, at the tribunal of those who ask no better thing of\nthem.  Few of them are doing the best that they can do, and they know\nit.  They are not doing it because the world does not ask them to do\nit; indeed, the world takes care that they shall have no opportunity of\ndoing it.  A certain faculty for arithmetic represents a man who has\nmany higher faculties; and thus the man is forced to live by one\ncapacity which is perhaps his least worthy and significant.  This is\nnot the case in what we call the liberal professions and the arts.  The\narchitect, the barrister, the humblest journalist needs his whole mind\nfor his task, and hence his work is a delight.  The artist, if he be a\ntrue artist, does the one thing that he was born to do, and so 'the\nhours pass away untold, without chagrin, and without weariness,' nor\nwould he wish them to pass otherwise.  Many times as I took my way to\nthe dreary labours of my desk I stopped to watch, and sometimes to talk\nwith, a smiling industrious little Frenchman, who repaired china and\nbronzes in a dingy shop in Welbeck Street.  He was an expert at his\ntrade; knew all the distinctive marks of old china, and could assign\nwith certainty the right date of any piece of bronze he handled; and to\nhear him discourse on these things would have been a liberal education\nto a budding connoisseur.  I never knew a man so indefatigably happy in\nhis work; his eye lit up at any special glow of colour or delicacy of\ndesign; he used his tools as though he loved them; and if he dreamed at\nnight, I doubt not that his canopies were coloured with the hues of\nSevres, and that bronze angels from the hand of Benvenuto stood about\nhis bed.  Plainly the man was happy because his work engaged his whole\nattention; and to every cunning rivet that he fashioned he gave the\nentire forces of his mind.  Here was a man who not merely got a living\nbut lived; and I, chained to my desk, knew well enough that his life\nwas much more satisfactory than mine.\n\nMoney has little to do with this problem of satisfactory living; I\nthink that this was the first discovery I made in the direction of a\nbetter mode of life.  My French workman earned perhaps two pounds a\nweek: I earned four or five; but he bought happiness with his work,\nwhereas I bought discontent and weariness.  Money may be bought at too\ndear a rate.  The average citizen, if he did but know it, is always\nbuying money too dear.  He earns, let us say, four hundred pounds a\nyear; but the larger proportion of this sum goes in what is called\n'keeping up appearances.'  He must live in a house at a certain rental;\nby the time that his rates and taxes are paid he finds one-eighth of\nhis income at least has gone to provide a shelter for his head.  A\ncottage, at ten pounds a year, would have served him better, and would\nhave been equally commodious.  He must needs send his children to some\nprivate 'academy' for education, getting only bad education and high\ncharges for his pains; a village board-school at twopence a week would\nhave offered undeniable advantages.  He must wear the black coat and\ntop-hat sacred to the clerking tribe; a tweed suit and cap are more\ncomfortable, and half the price.  At all points he is the slave of\nconvention, and he pays a price for his convention out of all\nproportion to its value.  At a moderate estimate half the daily\nexpenditure of London is a sacrifice to the convention or imposture of\nrespectability.\n\nUnless a man have, however, a large endowment of that liberal\ndiscontent which makes him perpetually examine and reexamine the\nconditions of his life, he will be a long time before he even suspects\nthat he is the victim of artificial needs.  When once the yoke of habit\nis imposed, the shoulder soon accustoms itself to the bondage, and the\naches and bruises of initiation are forgotten.  There are spasms of\ndisgust, moments of wise suspicion; but they are transient, and men\nsoon come to regard a city as the prison from whence there is no\nescape.  But is no escape possible?  That was the question which\npressed more and more upon me as the years went on.  I saw that the\ncrux of the whole problem was economic, I knew that I was not the\ngainer by a larger income, if I could buy a more real satisfaction on\nless income.  I saw that it was the artificial needs of life that made\nme a slave; the real needs of life were few.  A cottage and a hundred\npounds a year in a village meant happiness and independence; but dared\nI sacrifice twice or thrice the income to secure it?  The debate went\non for years, and it was ended only when I applied to it one fixed and\nreasoned principle.  That principle was that my first business as a\nrational creature was _not to get a living but to live_; and that I was\na fool to sacrifice the power of living in securing the means of life.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nEARTH-HUNGER\n\nLike Charles II., who apologised for being so unconscionably long in\ndying, I must apologise for being so long in coming to my point, which\nis the possibility of buying happiness at a cheaper rate than London\noffers it.  As it took me twenty years of experience to make my\ndiscovery, I may claim, however, that three chapters is no immoderate\namount of matter in which to describe it.  My chief occupation through\nthese years was to keep my discontent alive.  Satisfaction is the death\nof progress, and I knew well that if I once acquiesced entirely in the\nconditions of my life, my fate was sealed.\n\nI did not acquiesce, though the temper of my revolt was by no means\nsteady.  There were times when--to reverse an ancient saying--the muddy\nJordan of London life seemed more to me than all the sparkling waters\nof Damascus.  Humanity seemed indescribably majestic; and there were\nmoments when I sincerely felt that I would not exchange the trampled\ncauseways of the London streets for the greenest meadows that bordered\nRotha or Derwentwater.  There were days of early summer when London\nrose from her morning bath of mist in a splendour truly unapproachable;\nwhen no music heard of man seemed comparable with the long diapason of\nthe crowded streets; when from morn to eve the hours ran with an\ninconceivable gaiety and lightness, and the eye was in turn inebriated\nwith the hard glare and deep shadows of abundant light, with the\ninfinite contrasts of the streets, with the far-ranged dignity of domes\nand towers swimming in the golden haze of midday, or melting in the\nlilac mists of evening.  I felt also, in this vast congregation of my\nfellow-creatures, the exhilarating sense of my own insignificance.  Of\nwhat value were my own opinions, hopes, or programmes in this huge\nconcourse and confusion of opinion?  Who cared what one human brain\nchanced to think, where so many million brains were thinking?  I was\nswept on like a bubble in the stream, and I forgot my own\nindividuality.  And this forgetfulness became a pleasure; the mind,\nwearied of its own affairs, found delight in recollecting that the\nthings that seemed so great to it were after all of infinitesimal\nimportance in the general sum of things.\n\nAstronomy is often credited with providing this sensation; writers of\nfiction especially are fond of explaining how the voyage of the eye\nthrough space humbles the individual pride of man through the\noppression of magnitude and vastness.  They might come nearer home, for\nterrestrial magnitudes produce the same effect as celestial magnitudes;\nthe mind loses itself as readily in the abyss of London as in those\ngulfs of chaos that open in the Milky Way, confronting the eye with\nnaked infinitude; and this sense of personal insignificance is at once\na horror and a joy.  That humble acquiescence of the Londoner in his\nfate which we call his apathy, is the natural consequence of an\noverwhelming sense of personal insignificance.  The great reformer\nshould be country-born; in the solitude of nature he may come to think\nhimself significant, and have faith in those thoughts and intuitions\nwhich no one contradicts.  But in London, collective life, by its mere\nimmensity, overwhelms individual life so completely that no audacity or\narrogance of genius can supply that continuous and firm faith in\nhimself which the reformer must possess.\n\nIf I resisted these debilitating influences, it was through no\nparticular virtue of my own: it was rather through what I may call a\nkind of earth-hunger.  I had an obstinate craving for fresh air,\nunimpeded movement, outdoor life.  I wanted the earth, and I wanted to\nlive in the close embrace of the earth.  Some ancestor of mine must\nhave been a hermit on a mountain, a gipsy, or a peasant: I know not\nwhich, but something of the temperament of all three had been\nbequeathed to me.  The smell of fresh-turned earth was a smell that\nrevived in me a portion of my nature that had seemed dead; a flower set\nme dreaming of solitary woods; and I found myself watching clouds and\nweather-signs as though my bread depended on their lenience.  The first\ntime I saw a mountain I burst into tears, an act which astonished me no\nless than my companions.  I could offer no explanation of my conduct,\nbut I felt as though the mountain called me.  I said to myself, 'There\nis my home, yonder is the earth of which my corporeal part is\nfashioned; it is there that I should live and die.'  Even a London park\nin the first freshness of a summer morning produced these sensations;\nand those rare excursions which I took into the genuine country left me\naching for days afterwards with an exquisite pain.  I often imagined\nmyself living as Wordsworth did in Dove Cottage, as Thoreau did in the\nWalden Woods, and the vision was delightful.  I took an agricultural\npaper, and read it diligently, not because it was of the least\npractical utility to me, but because its simple details of country life\nseemed to me a kind of poetry.  In my rambles I never saw a lovely site\nwithout at once going to work to build an imaginary cottage on it, and\nthe views I had from the windows of my dream-cottages were more real to\nme than the actual prospects on which I looked every day.  I have even\ngone so far as to seek the offices of land-agents, and haggle over the\nprice of land which I never meant to buy, for the mere pleasure of\nfancying it was mine; and this kind of game was long pursued, for\nland-agents are a numerous tribe, and when one discovered my imposture,\nthere was always another ready to accept me as a capitalist in search\nof the picturesque.  In short, to possess one small fragment of the\nworld's surface; to have a hut, a cabin, or a cottage that was verily\nmy own, to eat the fruits of my own labour on the soil--this seemed to\nme the crown and goal of all human felicity.  Conscript of the city as\nI was, drilled and driven daily in the grim barrack-yard of despotic\ncivilisation, yet I was a deserter at heart; an earth-hunger as\nrapacious and intense as that of any French or Irish peasant burned in\nmy bones, and, like the peasant conscript that I truly was, my dreams\nwere all of green pastures and running streams, and the happy\nloneliness of open spaces under open skies.\n\nThis kind of earth-hunger is, I believe, not common among English\npeople to-day; if it were, the tide of life would not set so steadily\ntownward as it does.  The class in which it existed most strongly was\nthe yeoman class, and this is a class which has practically\ndisappeared.  In my youth I knew half a dozen persons of this class, to\nwhom towns were genuinely abhorrent.  They would come to London once or\ntwice in their lives, visit certain market towns in their district at\nintervals, and escape back into the country with the joy of wild birds\nliberated from a cage.  The mere grime and dirt of cities horrified\nthem; they were suffocated in the close air, and they were driven half\ndistracted by the clamour of the streets.  These men lived, upon the\nwhole, lives of not immoderate labour: or, as one might say, of sober\nease, They possessed little money, it is true, but the want of it did\nnot appear to trouble them.  Their houses were plain, their method of\nlife simple, and clearly it had not entered their minds to covet any\nmore sumptuous modes of life.  All this is changed now.  The daily\npress, which presents a thousand pictures of the bustling life of\ncities, goes everywhere, and has communicated a strange restlessness to\nthe rural mind.  Increased means of locomotion have brought London to\nthe very door of village communities.  If men to-day actually possessed\nthe acres on which they toil they would be in no hurry to leave them;\nthey would be effectually chained to the soil by the sense of\nindependence and proprietorship, as is the case among the rural\npopulation of France, who do not rent but own the land.  The yeomen did\nown the land, and that was the secret of their content.  But when the\nday of large farms came, the small landowners were crushed out; and as\nfor the mere peasant, he has no chance at all of ever owning land, and\nnever has had; so that he has every inducement to crowd into towns\nwhere wages are nominally higher, and he soon outgrows that natural\nearth-hunger which modern civilisation affords him no means of\ngratifying.\n\nBy virtue of the peasant or gipsy blood in me I kept my earth-hunger\nthrough twenty years of London life, but I count my case unique.  I\nnever found any one who shared my feelings; on the contrary, I found\nthat whatever primitive instincts toward country life my friends may\nhave had once, London had made an effectual end of them.  The country\nmeans for most Londoners, not the blessed solitude of open spaces, but\nMargate or Brighton.   When the annual summer exodus arrives he does\nbut exchange one kind of town for another kind.  He carries with him\nall the aptitudes and artificial instincts of the town; he loves the\nbustle of a crowd; he wants boarding-houses full of company, and\nstreets brilliant with electric light; and he returns to town, after a\nvivacious fortnight, without having once looked upon the real country,\nunless it be with the distracted eye of a rider on a _char-a-banc_.  If\nmy earth-hunger did not die in London, it was mainly because my\nholidays were of a very different description.  I never visited but one\nwatering-place, and that was enough.  I never stayed in a\nboarding-house in my life, nor would the promise of all my expenses\npaid and a handsome bonus into the bargain tempt me to the experiment.\nI sought the country absolute; a cottage or a little farm remote from\ntowns and out of sound of railways; villages so tiny that maps refuse\nto name them.  I can count half a dozen of these places which haunt my\nmemory with all the sanctity of some religious dream.  They were my\ntemporary cloisters, where I received the sacrament of silence; the\nwoodland sanctuaries where my spirit was renewed.  When my friends\nreturned from Margate they were full of chatter about the people that\nthey had met, and they went about whistling the last song they had\nheard upon the beach.  I had met no one but a few simple labouring\nfolk, and the music I remembered was the whistling of blackbirds and\nthrushes in the early dawn.  I knew that I had purchased much finer\npleasure in a single day, and at a cheaper rate, than they in a month\nof days; but I never told them so, for they would not have understood\nme.  The ear that hungers for the raucous strains of cockney Pierrots\non a beach cannot attune itself to the notes of the morning thrush.\n\nThere is one tiny farm that I love to think of, because its tenants\ntaught me better than a thousand books could have done how real was the\nfelicity of simple life.  It had six rooms all told, and was little\nbetter than a cottage.  Before its door ran a clear river which\nconnected two lakes; a pinewood rose behind the house, and behind this\nagain the lower buttresses of the everlasting hills.  The nearest town\nwas seven miles away; you reached it by a lovely road, in part through\npinewoods, in part over open moors, with the silver flashing of a lake\nnever far away, and the purple mountains always close at hand.  The\nfarm-holding was insignificantly small, as was the case in those parts;\nbut my host uttered no word of its insufficiency.  He grew enough oats\nto provide good oatmeal for his family and fodder for his horse; his\npotatoes also came from his own soil, and his bacon from his own stye;\nhis few sheep gave him fresh meat, or brought him a little money in the\nmarket, and from their wool every blanket in the house was spun, and\neven his own clothing woven.  Two cows provided milk and butter for the\nhousehold; his fowls gave him eggs and occasionally a dinner; and thus\nwith the exception of the yearly grocer's bill he spent next to no\nmoney.  I dwelt beneath this humble roof for a month, and I profess\nthat in all that time I never saw the members of the household engaged\nin any labour that was not also a pleasure.  There was plenty of work,\nof course: cows to be milked, vegetables to be dug and cleansed, meals\nto be prepared, the little harvest to be gathered in; but it was work\nthat one could do with singing.  No one hurried over it, for there was\nample time for every duty of the day.  No one felt these simple duties\nburdensome, because they were so natural and inevitable, It was a rare\nday when some member of the household did not find an hour or two for\nfishing, and a disappointing breakfast that did not show a lordly dish\nof trout.\n\nIt may be imagined that in a place so remote culture would be\nmissing--at least the love and knowledge of books which we call\nculture; but when I say the place was Scotch this delusion is disposed\nof.  The children had had to walk that long seven miles a day and back\nagain, in all weathers, to obtain an education.  They had grown up to\nvalue it, and were the better mentally as well as physically for their\nthousands of miles of tramping.  There were books in the little\nhousehold, and good books too.  As often as not when we sat round the\nred peats of an evening, we discussed Browning or Herbert Spencer.\nThat year it happened that a party of students from Edinburgh\nUniversity were camping in the neighbourhood, and they often joined us\nround the farm fire of an evening.  They talked about books and\nopinions and men with all the omniscience of youth; but the two girls\nof the household held their own with them.  Ah, Kate M'Intyre, you did\nme much friendly service in tying flies for me that summer, and\nteaching me something of the craft of fishing; but you did a far more\nenduring service in helping me to see that one does not need towns and\nlibraries to grow the fine flower of wholesome cultured womanhood.\nHere, beside that lake, whose lady has been made immortal by the hand\nof Scott, you showed me that God grows ladies still who wear homespun\nand live in cottages, and are all the wiser and sweeter for the bright\nseclusion of their lives.  In a town, you and your family, endowed only\nwith such means as you found sufficient for existence, would have been\ndespondent drudges, you yourself perhaps working in a sewing-room in\nbad air and for poor pay, but here you were the free-holders of nature.\nNever did I see you go about your simple duties--always with a bright\nlook and a snatch of song--but I said to myself, 'She hath chosen the\nbetter part, which shall not be taken away from her'; and I say it\nstill, though I am well aware that the smart young women of London\nshops and restaurants will not believe me.  I dare say they would count\nthemselves much better off than you in money, in dress, and in\nopportunities of pleasure; but I know who was the richer in vitality,\nin health, and in the power of happiness.\n\nWhen I lived among these simple folk I shared not only their roof but\ntheir labours, and it was thus I came to distinguish between the nature\nof work in cities and work in the country.  To obtain my meal in a city\nI had to do things that were distasteful to me; I had to shut myself\naway from the fresh air and sunlight in a dingy room and to spend dull\nhours in tasks which afforded me no genuine intellectual pleasure.\nHere, on the contrary, every duty had a pastime yoked with it.  I rose\nearly, not only that I might learn to milk the cows, but that I might\nsee the sunrise; if I went into the woods to saw logs that would\npresently make a clear flame on the evening fire, my lungs drank health\namong the forest fragrances; when I went fishing I did something not\nonly pleasurable but useful, for I added dainties to my larder.  In the\ncity I lived to work; here I worked to live.  I might go further and\nsay that in the city I lived to work for other people, for my brains\nwere daily exploited that my master might maintain a house at\nKensington, and when the landlord, the water-lord, the light-lord, and\nthe rate-collector had all had their dues from me there was little\nenough left that I could call my own.  Here, on the contrary, all that\nI did had an immediate and direct relation to my own well-being.  The\namount of work I had to do to live was light, and I bought with it\nsomething that was my own.  We are so used to the exactions of a\ncomplicated and artificial life, that it is an amazing discovery to\nascertain how small is the toll of labour which Nature asks of those\nwho live naturally.  You have but to do certain things which in\nthemselves are pleasures to obtain ample means of life; and as these\nthings are soon and easily done by a healthy human creature there is an\nabundant leisure at his command.  To split pine-logs, dig a garden,\npull a heavy boat down the lake after fish, tramp up the hillside to\ncollect the sheep, are simply so many exercises of the body, the\nequivalents of which town youths find in the gymnasium or the football\nfield; the difference is that all this exertion in the gymnasium, which\nthe town youth takes to keep up his health, would in the country _keep\nhim_.  The same amount of muscular exertion which a town youth puts\nforth to chase a ball round a twenty acre field would, if properly\napplied, put a roof over his head and food on his table.  The sports of\nthe civilised man are means of life to the natural man.  If a man must\nneeds sweat, and be bemired, and have an aching back, it is surely\nbetter economy to have a house and a good meal at the end of it all\nthan merely a good appetite for a meal that he has yet to pay for.  I\ndo not object to buy health in hard physical exercise if I can buy it\nin no other way; but I am better satisfied if I can buy health and a\nmeal at the same time and for the same price.  This is practically what\nis done every day by men who live in the country.  In a town they would\nundertake an equal amount of muscular exertion for the sake of health,\nand would find that they still had 'to go to business' to live; here\nthey have done their business in doing their pleasure.\n\nEarth-hunger is without doubt the most wholesome passion men can\nentertain, and if Governments were wise they would do all they could to\nfortify and gratify it.  On the contrary, the settled policy of English\nGovernment is entirely hostile to it.  There is no country where it is\nso difficult to acquire freehold land in small quantities--a subject on\nwhich I shall have more to say presently.  Bad land-laws lie at the\nback of what we call the urban tendencies of modern life.  If fifty\nyears ago the Irish peasantry had had the same facilities for acquiring\nland that they have to-day, it is safe to say that there would have\nbeen little or no emigration, for never was there race that left the\nland of its fathers with such bitter and entire reluctance as the\nIrish.  The English peasant shares the same reluctance, though his\nslower nature is incapable of expressing it with the same volubility of\nanguish.  Give him enough land to live upon; make him a proprietor\ninstead of a serf; let him have fair railway rates, so that his produce\ncan fetch its proper price in the markets, and there were no man so\nproud and so content as he.  But this is just what the feudal laws of\nEngland will not do for him; and so millions of acres fall out of\ncultivation and farms go a-begging because the men who could have kept\nthem prosperous have been forced to sell their thews and muscles to be\nprostituted in the dismal drudgeries of cities.\n\nThere is an even worse result.  Earth-hunger has been displaced by\nMoney-hunger.  Simple ideas of life must needs perish where the nature\nof a nation's life makes them difficult or impossible of attainment.  A\ncountry-born youth might keep to the soil, if he saw the slightest hope\nthat the soil would keep him; when he sees that this is impossible he\nfiles to cities, because he believes that there is more gold to be\npicked up in the city mire in a month than can be won from the ploughed\nfallow in a year.  It is not until the altars of Pan are overthrown\nthat the worship of Mammon is triumphant, and the mischief is that when\nthe great god Pan is driven away he returns no more.  When once\nMoney-hunger seizes on a nation, that primitive and wholesome\nEarth-hunger--old as the primal Eden, where man's life began--is\nstifled at the birth; the spade and harrow rust, and instead of swords\nbeing beaten to ploughshares, ploughshares are beaten into swords for\nthe use of soldiers who are the gladiators of commercial avarice; the\nwealth of the country runs into the swamp of speculation; the scripture\nof Nature is cast aside for the blotted pages of the betting-book;\nsport becomes not a means of recreation but of gambling; and instead of\nsturdy races bred upon the soil, and drawing from the soil solid\nqualities of mind and body, you have blighted and anaemic races, bred\namid the populous disease of cities, and incapable of any task that\nshall demand steady energy, continuous thought, or sober powers of\nreflection or of will.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nHEALTH AND ECONOMICS\n\nEnough has been said to show that I never heartily settled to a town\nlife, and that the obstacle to content was my own character.  Mere\ndiscontent with one's environment, however useful it may be as an\nirritant to prevent stagnation and brutish acquiescence, obviously does\nnot carry one very far.  Men may chafe for years at the conditions of\ntheir lot without in any way attempting to amend them.  I soon came to\nsee that I was in danger of falling into this condition of futility.  I\nwas, therefore, forced to face the question whether my continual inward\nprotest against the kind of life which I led was founded on anything\nmore stable than an opinion or a sentiment?  No man ever yet took a\npositively heroic or original course for the sake of an opinion.\nOpinion must become conviction before it has any potency to change the\nordering of life.  I saw plainly that I must either bring my thoughts\nto the point of conviction or discard them altogether.\n\nThere is a good phrase which is sometimes used about men who are\nmembers of a party, without in any way entering into its propagandist\naims--we say that they 'do not play the game.'  They may have excellent\nphilosophic reasons for their aloofness, or even admirable scruples;\nbut parties do not ask for either.  Parties ask for party loyalty, and\nto give this loyalty personal scruples must be set aside.  I could not\nbut apply this doctrine to my own state of mind.  London asked me to\nplay the game, and I was not playing it.  It was impossible to put\nheart into a kind of life which I inwardly detested.  I did my day's\nwork with a mind divided; and, although no one could accuse me of\nwilful negligence, yet a child could see that my work missed that\nquality of entire efficiency which makes for success.  I might count\nmyself much superior to men like Arrowsmith by the possession of\nsuperior sentiments, yet, in the long run, my sentiment debilitated me,\nand his destitution of sentiment was a source of power to him in the\nkind of work we both had to do.  To the man who detests the nature of\nhis employment as I detested mine, I would say at once, either conquer\nyour detestation or change your work.  Work that is not genuinely loved\ncannot possibly be done well.  It is no use chafing and fretting and\nwishing that you lived in the country, if you know perfectly well that\nyou have not the least intention of living anywhere but in the town.\nIf it is town life you are really bent upon, the sooner rustic\ninstincts are uprooted the better for you.  London can prove herself a\ncomplaisant mistress to those who desire no other, but she will give\nnothing to those who flout her in their hearts.  In plain words there\nis no middle course between accepting the yoke or finally rejecting it;\neither course may be justified, but it is the silliest folly to accept\nwith complacency a yoke which you mean to shake off the moment you have\ncourage or opportunity to revolt.  London marks such dissemblers with\nan angry eye, as captains mark reluctant soldiers; and if time holds no\ndisgrace for them it will certainly bring them no advancement.\n\nWere my fine theories composed of mere fluid sentiment, or had they\nsome more consistent element in them which was capable of hardening\ninto invincible conviction?  That was my problem.  It was debated in\nseason and out of season.  Gradually the two dominant factors in the\nproblem became evident; they were health and economics.\n\nThere could be no question about health.  It was true that I had\nsuffered from no serious illness in my life, but London kept me in a\nnormal state of low vitality.  I had constant headaches, fits of\ndepression, and minor physical derangements.  I rarely knew what it was\nto wake in the morning with that clear joyousness of spirit which marks\nvigorous vitality.  A London winter I dreaded, and I had good reason\nfor my dread.  When the fog lay on the town an unbearable oppression\nlay also on my spirits.  Imagination had little to do with this\noppression; it was the physical result of lack of oxygen.  It was the\nsame with my children; they grew pinched and bleached in face, and went\nabout their little tasks with the slowness of old men.  It is stated, I\nbelieve, that London is the healthiest city in the world; no doubt it\nis true as regards the actual percentage of disease to the immense\npopulation, but statistics take no account of lowered vitality.\nWithout being actually ill, vitality may be reduced to a point at which\nexistence becomes a kind of misery.  Alcohol dissolves for a time the\ncloud on the mind, the incubus upon the energies; and the relief is so\ngreat that men do not think of the price they pay for it.  No wonder\npublic-houses are the landmarks of London locomotion; they are the\nTemples of Oblivion, where the devitalised multitudes seek to forget\nthemselves, that they may regain the courage to live at all.\n\nFor myself, I had sense to know that stimulants of this kind were a\nremedy much worse than the disease.  The only stimulant, at once safe\nand effectual, which I needed was fresh air.  The moment I found myself\namong the hills a miraculous change was wrought in me.  I had not\nbreathed that quick and vital air for an hour before a glow ran through\nmy veins more delightful, and much more enduring, than the glow of\nwine.  A single night in some small cottage chamber--where the very bed\nhad a cool scent of flowers and lawns, where the open window admitted\nair fresh from pine forest and mountain streams, where the silence was\nso deep that one's pulse seemed to tick aloud like a watch--and I awoke\na man renewed.  Six o'clock, or even five, was not too soon for all my\nlittle household to be astir.  We were all alike eager for the open\nair; for the walk, bare-footed, through the dewy grass to the mountain\npool; for the shock and thrill of that green water into which we\nplunged delighted; and in those prolonged and pure ablations I think\nour spirits shared.  The bells of laughter rang the livelong day.  The\ncramped mind began to move again, and long abdicated powers of fancy\nand of humour were restored.  Equanimity of body brought evenness of\ntemper; it was incredible to recollect how irritable we had been with\none another in those ghastly days of London fog, when the very grating\nof a chair along the floor made the nerves jump.  Even the mind took\nnew edge, for though I did not read much upon a holiday, yet I found\nthat what I did read left a clearness of impression to which I had long\nbeen unaccustomed.  And what was the root and cause of all this\nmiracle?  Fresh air, wholesome food, rude health--nothing more!  To\nfeel that it is bliss to be alive, health alone is needed.  And by\nhealth I mean not the absence of physical ailment or disease, but a\nhigh condition of vitality.  This the country gave me; this the town\ndenied me.  The only question was then, at what rate did I value the\nboon?\n\nThis brought me immediately to the much more complex problem of\neconomics.  I knew that men could live in the country on small means,\nfor men did so; but I perceived that the art of living in the country\ndid not come by nature.  Every one supposes that he can drive a horse\nor grow potatoes; and, when we recollect how many thousands of men go\nto Canada to take up agricultural pursuits without the least knowledge\nof the business, it is clear that the belief is general that any man\ncan farm.  I may claim the merit of freedom from this popular delusion.\nI not only knew that I could not farm, but I did not wish to be a\nfarmer.  What I wished was to live in the country in some modest way\nthat answered to my needs; to earn by some form of exertion a small\nincome; and at the most, to grow my own vegetables, catch my own fish,\nand snare my own rabbits.\n\nA legacy of two hundred a year would have served my purpose admirably,\nbut modesty forbade me laying my case before benevolent millionaires,\nand a destitution of maiden aunts put an end to any hopes of a bequest\nby natural causes.\n\nWhat was my precise position then?  I had a salary of two hundred and\nfifty pounds a year.  An investment that had turned out fortunately\ngave me about forty pounds a year.  I had done from time to time a\nlittle work for the press, which had been worth to me about thirty\npounds a year more.  My total budget showed, then, an annual income of\nthree hundred and twenty pounds, which I found barely sufficient for my\nneeds as a dweller in towns.  If I migrated to a cottage, how would\nmatters stand with me?   I should lose my two hundred and fifty pounds\nper annum of course, and this was an alarming prospect.  But, on the\nother hand, I reminded myself that I had never really possessed it.  I\nprepared various tables in which I arranged the items of my expenditure\nunder two heads, viz. the expenditure that was inevitable, and the\nexpenditure that was evitable, because it was the result of town life.\nI shall best explain by giving a sample of these tables:--\n\n\n  TABLE I.\n\n  INEVITABLE EXPENDITURE.                    L.  s.  d.\n\n  Food and general household expenses,\n    calculated at 30s. per week   . . . . .  78  0   0\n  Books, magazines, and papers  . . . . . .   5  0   0\n  Clothes for two adults and two children .  20  0   0\n  Insurances  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  25  0   0\n  Holidays  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  30  0   0\n  Education   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35  0   0\n  Sundries  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10  0   0\n  Rent, rates, and taxes  . . . . . . . . .  65  0   0\n                                            ----------\n                                           L268  0   0\n\n  TABLE II.\n\n  EVITABLE EXPENDITURE.\n\n  If I adopted a country life.               L.  s.  d.\n\n  Holidays  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  30  0   0\n  By saving on rent, rates, and taxes,\n    calculating my cottage cost me not\n    more than L20 per annum   . . . . . . .  45  0   0\n  By saving in food   . . . . . . . . . . .  20  0   0\n                                            ----------\n                                            L95  0   0\n\n\nIt will be seen that I allowed no reduction in clothes and books, for I\ndid not wish my children to be dressed as beggars, or to be ignorant of\ncurrent literature.\n\nIt does not need the eye of a chartered accountant to perceive that\nwhatever may be said for Table II., Table I. is not satisfactory.  In\nit I accounted for only 268 pounds, whereas I have already stated my\ntotal income was 320 pounds.  What became of the 52 pounds which found\nno record in my ingenuous schedule?  I could not tell, but I was pretty\nsure that it was absorbed in the petty wastefulness of town life.\nLondoners are so accustomed to constant daily expenditure in small\nways, that it occurs to no one to ascertain how considerable an\nencroachment this aggregate expenditure is upon the total yearly\nincome.  In all but very fine weather I must needs use some means of\npublic conveyance every day; there was a daily lunch to be provided;\nand when work kept me late at the office there was tea as well.  One\ncan lunch comfortably on a shilling or eighteenpence a day; and I knew\nplaces where I could have lunched for much less, but they were in parts\nof the town which I could not reach in the brief time at my disposal.\nMoreover, one must needs be the slave of etiquette even though he be a\nclerk, and if all the staff of an office frequent a certain restaurant,\none must perforce fall into line with them under penalty of social\nostracism.  Thus, whether I liked it or not, for five days in the week\nI had to spend eighteenpence a day for lunch, and fourpence for teas;\nand if we add those small gratuities which the poorest men take it as a\npoint of honour to observe, here was an annual expenditure of 25\npounds.  Taking one thing with another 5 pounds might be added for 'bus\nand railway fares; so that only 22 pounds is left to be accounted for.\nAnd now, if we return to Table II., it is obvious that my income of 320\npounds per annum was only nominal, because a very great part of it was\nreally spent in keeping up a position which a town life imposed upon\nme.  Before I touched a single penny of my nominal income of 250 pounds\nper annum, I had paid 30 pounds per year in the daily expenses\ninevitable to my position, and 65 pounds for rent and taxes, which was\nquite 45 pounds more than I ought to pay.  Education comes also to be\nconsidered at this point.  My two children went to a very respectable\nschool at the cost of a little more than 15 pounds per annum each.  No\ndoubt I might have sent them to a Board school, where they would have\nreceived a better education; but in the part of London where I lived\nthere was no Board school within easy reach, and besides this, though I\nhate the pretension of gentility, manners and companionship have to be\nconsidered as well as education in the choice of a school.  A child may\ntake no harm by sitting on the same bench with village children, but\nthe London gamin is not a desirable acquaintance.  In this, as in other\nmatters, I paid through the nose for my position; and the convention\ncost me a clear 35 pounds per annum.  Thus I calculated that out of a\nnominal income of 250 pounds per annum 100 pounds was paid as a tax to\nconvention and respectability.\n\nI have no doubt that a good many flaws may be found in these\ncalculations; but one point is beyond dispute, viz., that a town income\nis always more apparent than real.  Money is worth no more than its\npurchasing power.  The business man who is offered 1000 pounds per\nannum in New York against 700 pounds per annum in London, refuses the\noffer unless it carries with it great contingent advantages, because he\nknows perfectly well that 700 pounds a year in London is worth a good\ndeal more than 1000 pounds a year in New York.  But the same kind of\nprudent calculation is seldom applied to the case of town versus\ncountry living at home.  It is impossible to persuade the labourer that\na pound a week in London is really less than fifteen shillings a week\nin the country.  Men are dazzled by mere figures, and there is no\ncountry clerk who would not jump at the idea of a fifty pounds a year\nrise in London, though ten minutes spent over a sum in addition and\nsubtraction would be sufficient to assure him that he would not be\nenlarging his income but diminishing it.  A man has to live upon a\ncertain scale suited to his needs and tastes, but the income which\nmakes this kind of life possible is a variable quantity.  It is not by\nwhat men earn in the aggregate that their incomes should be measured,\nbut by what they have left when the necessary cost of living is\ndefrayed.  If it costs a man fifty pounds a year more to live in London\nthan in the country, he is obviously no better off by the extra fifty\npounds he earns in London.  He is not earning fifty pounds for himself\nbut fifty pounds for the landlord, the rate-collector, the gas-man, the\nrestaurant proprietor, the omnibus and railway companies.  His gold\nnever reaches his own pocket; it is filched from him by dexterous\nthieves; it gleams before him for an instant like the coin spun in the\nair by the conjurer or thimble-rigger, and then vanishes for ever.  Yet\nI have found few men keen enough to penetrate the delusion; it would\nseem they love to be deluded, and by their conduct justify the satiric\nlines of _Hudibras_--\n\n  Doubtless the pleasure is as great\n  To cheated be as 'tis to cheat.\n\nIn most things I claim to be no wiser than my fellow-men, but in this I\nknew myself wiser; I knew where I was cheated.  I knew that the\nschoolmaster who cost me thirty pounds a year was a licensed footpad;\nhalf the money spent in restaurants and tea-shops was blackmail paid to\nrespectability; the landlord who took his forty-five pounds a year from\nmy pocket was a mere robber, who took advantage of the need I had to\nlive in a certain locality that I might attend to my vocation.  Not\nonly were my brains exploited that my employer might maintain a\nsumptuous house at Kensington, but the wage he paid me was exploited by\na host of other people, who had houses of their own to maintain.\nBefore I could feed my children I must help to pay for and cook the\ndinner of the folk who lived on the dividends of railways and omnibus\ncompanies.  On the way to my office the tailor took toll of me by\nforcing me to wear a garb which I detested, simply because I dared wear\nno other garb.  I could not even drink plain water but that some one\nwas the richer.  I was the common gull of the thing called convention.\nI was plucked to the skin, and if my skin had been worth turning into\nleather, some one would have put in a claim to that.  Even for my skin,\npoor asset as it was, some one did wait, when it had ceased to be of\nuse to me, for London cemeteries declare dividends upon the dead.  My\ncase reminded me of an old gentleman I once knew, who wore so many\ncoats, waistcoats, and shirts to keep warmth in a body of singular\nattenuation, that it was commonly said that by the time James Smith\nundressed at night there was very little James Smith that was\ndiscoverable.  Certainly by the time London had done wringing gold out\nof me there was very little gold left that was my own.\n\nThere was, however, one kind of comfort to be deduced from these\nreflections; if I was not nearly so well off as I appeared to be, I had\nall the less to lose.  Rightly considered it would not be 250 pounds\nper annum that I should lose by leaving London, for I had never\npossessed that sum, I calculated my real loss at something nearer 150\npounds, and this seemed not so terrible a thing.  I had my forty pounds\na year for certain.  I had the small earnings of my pen, and with\nabundant time upon my hands I saw every reason why these should be\nincreased.  Could I face a new kind of life upon an income of seventy\npounds per annum?  Ah, how anxiously that problem was debated with my\nwife, many a night when the children were abed!  The natural\nconservatism of woman had a great deal to say in these debates.  'It\nwas all very well,' said my wife, 'to do these little sums on paper,\nbut suppose the facts did not correspond?  Suppose I found no cottage\nat twenty pounds a year, and no decent school at sixpence a week?  Then\nthe world was full of writers for the press.'  (I frowned.)  'Not of\ncourse like you, not half so good,' she added with a smile, 'but how do\nyou know that you will succeed?  Show me a fixed income of 100 pounds a\nyear, and I would chance it, for I can live simply enough,' she would\nsay, 'and am as fond of liberty as you.'\n\nShe might have added what I knew to be true, that the penalties of\nLondon life fell heavier upon her than me.  I was not insensible to the\ninstantaneous lightening of spirits that happened with her when she was\nable to forsake the abominable purlieus of the cellar-kitchen where her\nlife was spent; and although I knew not half her toils, nor half her\ndejections and anxieties, which were sedulously kept from me, yet I was\nnot wholly blind.  I had seen her too amid the roses of a cottage\ngarden flying the colour of long-forgotten roses in her cheeks; in the\nhay-field shaking off a dozen years in as many hours; and although she\nwas always young to me, she never seemed so young and sweet as when we\nwalked a honeysuckled lane together.  Her desire was with me I knew\nwell; she had no fear of poverty, and would have been content with\nplainer fare than I; but her children made her prudent.\n\nAt last the one thing happened which made her prudence coincide with\nher desires; one of the children sickened with a languor that was the\nprecursor of disease, and the doctors said that only country air could\nbring back strength.  And then fate itself took the whole matter out of\nmy control.  Something happened in the city--I know not what--and the\nfirm I served came near to shipwreck.  Business shrank to a diminished\nchannel, and the staff of clerks must needs be reduced.  I have said\nsome hard words of my employer as the exploiter of my labour; he will\nappear no more in this history, and my last word about him shall be\njustly kind.  He broke the news of his misfortune to me with a delicacy\nthat made me respect him, and with a hesitating painful shame that made\nme pity him.  He praised me beyond my merit for my twenty years of\nservice; he had hoped to keep me with him for another twenty years, and\nI believe he spoke the truth when he said it pained him to think that\nhis misfortunes should be mine.  He handed me in silence a cheque for\nfifty pounds.  He then shook my hand heartily, murmured some vague\nwords about hoping to reinstate me if things should mend, and hurried\nfrom me; and in his broken look and bowed shoulders I read the prophecy\nthat his days of fortune and success were gone for ever.  The little\ntragedy was played out in less than ten minutes.  I locked my desk, put\non my hat and coat, and went out into the street; and my heart felt a\npang at leaving the place which I should never have imagined possible.\nI had walked fully half a mile before another thought occurred to me.\nMy blood suddenly sang in my veins, and I remembered that I was an\nemancipated slave; at last I was Free!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nIN SEARCH OF THE PICTURESQUE\n\nI was free, but what was I to do with my freedom?  Ingenious apologists\nfor slavery used to argue that the slave was much happier as a bondman\nthan a freeman, as long as the conditions of his bondage were not\nunendurably harsh: but no one ever knew a slave who held this creed.\nThere never was a slave who did not prefer his dinner of herbs, earned\nby his own labour, to the stalled ox of luxurious captivity.   For my\npart, I thought the air never tasted so sweet as on that morning of my\nliberation.  I walked slowly, drawing long breaths, that I might taste\nits full relish, as a connoisseur passes an exquisite and rare wine\nover his palate, that he may discriminate its subtleties.  I became a\nlounger, and took the pavement with the air of a gentleman at ease.  I\nwandered into Hyde Park, paid my penny for a seat, and sat down almost\ndizzy with the unaccustomed thought that there was not a human being in\nthe universe who, at that moment, had the smallest claim to make upon\nmy time or energy.  An hour passed in a kind of ecstatic dream.  It\nchanced to be a morning when Queen Victoria was driving from Paddington\nto Buckingham Palace, and every instant the throng of carriages\nincreased.  Standing on my seat, I saw an immense lane of people,\nsilent as a wood; a contagious shiver stirred them, like a gust of wind\namongst the leaves; I saw the distant glitter of helmets and cuirasses,\nand the pageant swept along with that one tired, kindly, homely face\nfor its centre of attraction, luring loyalty even from a heart so\nrepublican as mine by its air of patient weariness.  I thought, and I\nbelieved the thought sincere, that I would not have exchanged places\nwith her who was the mistress of so many peoples, the Empress of such\nindeterminable Empire.  My new-born loyalty was three-parts pity.  Had\nshe, who sat there in such 'lonely splendour,' ever known the day,\nsince as a young girl the heavy rod of empire was intrusted to her\nfrail and unaccustomed hands, when she woke to say, 'This day I am\nfree, I will go where I will, do as I please, and none shall stay me?'\nYet I, a manumitted clerk, had come upon this singular and glad day;\nand I had it in my heart to say with Emerson, 'Give me health and a\nday, and I will make the pomp of empire ridiculous.'\n\nI turned slowly homeward in this glow of exultation.  I should have\nrun, for the news, either good or evil, called for instant\ncommunication.  Let my delay stand excused; I had certain matters to be\nsettled with myself that morning.  My feet had to learn a new kind of\nmovement, and my thoughts a new sequence; I was as a child learning to\nwalk and think before I could take my place on equal terms with new\ncompanions.  One incident of my walk struck me by way of humour and\ndiscovery.  I had often strolled into bookshops toward evening, and had\nremarked upon the cold discourtesy with which my presence was regarded.\nNow I knew the reason; I had come at the clerk's hour, and the keen\neyes of discriminating shopmen had recognised my low estate.  I came\nnow under altered auspices.  To shop at three in the afternoon is to\ngive proof of leisure; behold, in the eyes of obsequious shopmen I had\nat once become a wealthy dilettante, nurturing the growth of an\nexpensive library, and the rarest books were laid before me with an\ningratiating smile.  Let the man who would understand how much the\nestimates men take of us are based on wealth, or supposed wealth, make\nthe brief experiment of shopping at the rich man's hour, instead of at\nthe poor man's; he will be surprised to note the difference of the\nsocial atmosphere.  A man's clothes may be poor enough, and his\nappearance contemptible, but if he will shop at the hour when all the\ndrudges are at work, no one will take him for a drudge.  I will confess\nit gave me pleasure to note this change of estimate.  I seemed to taste\nthe first privilege of a freeman, when a pursy bookseller took from a\nglass case certain expensive books on Art, and drew my attention, with\nsubtle deference to my judgment, to the merits of the pictures they\ncontained.  I may as well confess at once, that so intoxicated was I\nwith the new respect that greeted me, that I even bought one of these\nvolumes, which I did not need, and certainly could not afford.  It was\na weakness and a folly, no doubt; but how could I tell my obsequious\nfriend that I paid my guinea not for anything he sold me, but as a sort\nof first footing on my entrance to the realm of freedom?  I might have\nspent it much worse, for I bought my self-respect with it.\n\nThe sight of my doorstep brought me to my bearings, for a man's own\ndoorstep is a rare corrective of disordered fancies.  The fact I had to\ncommunicate was briefly this; That I had lost 250 pounds per annum,\nagainst which I had 50 pounds to show by way of compensation.  Women, I\nhave long noticed--or women of the best kind, I ought to add--have much\nmore genius in finance than men.  They have a much keener sense of the\nuse of money; an excellent thing in women when it does not deteriorate\ninto cheese-paring and sordid parsimony.  They, being primitive and\nunsophisticated creatures, are unacquainted with the lax morals of the\ncheque-book; a pound is just twenty shillings to them, and each\nshilling is an entity, and each is spent with an indomitable aim to get\nthe most out of it.  How would my wife regard the definite\ndisappearance of five thousand shillings?  Not with levity, I knew; and\nI thought it best to say nothing of that guinea volume on the _Tombs of\nthe Etruscans_.  The _Tombs of the Etruscans_ would have meant to her\nthree pairs of boots; and I wished that I might conceal it in mine.  A\nwise bishop once argued that marriage was ordained not for man's\npleasure, but his discipline; I believe that he was not far wrong.  It\nis no use disputing the fact that the married man is always in danger\nof the judgment; and it is only by some form of bribery that he can\nhope to escape being cast in damages.  I resolved on bribery, and made\nmy cheque the bribe.  Here said I, was present wealth, let us be\ncontent.  The plea was not received with instant favour, but it was not\nwholly ineffectual.  By the time we sat down to supper that night we\nhad all attained to cheerfulness.  It was a meal of some tenuity, not\ncalculated to lie heavy on the stomach; for, said Charlotte, 'If we\nhave to begin high thinking and plain living, we can't begin too\nearly.'  The only load on my digestion that night was the _Tombs of the\nEtruscans_.\n\nIt says much for the steadfastness of our convictions, that in this new\ncrisis of affairs the old resolution to seek a country life passed\nunquestioned.  What to another had seemed calamity appeared to us\nopportunity.  When the daily paper came next morning, it was not to the\ncolumns where commerce chronicles its wants that my eye turned, but to\nthe much more engaging columns where lands and houses were advertised\nfor sale.  This part of the newspaper had long ago attracted me by its\nfine air of surreptitious romance.  My mind had often been kept aglow\nfor a whole day by some seductive advertisement of cottages 'situate\namid pine-woods,' or farmhouses, all complete, even to the styes and\nkennels, which by all accounts were to be given away.  One such\nadvertisement I particularly remember for a kind of insane generosity\nwhich pervaded it.  It described at length a farmhouse, 'stone-built\nand covered with ivy' (observe the very definite sense of the\npicturesque conveyed in this phrase), containing ten rooms, commanding\npleasant views of a well-wooded country, together with a large orchard,\nand one hundred and fifty acres of freehold land, the whole of which\nmight be purchased for 750 pounds; and, added the advertiser, 'the\nfurniture at present in the house is included in the price.'  I do not\nknow where this terrestrial Paradise existed; I believe it was in\nEssex; but I often regretted that I made no effort to discover it.\n\nHowever, the morning paper, if it contained no paragraph comparable\nwith this in point of style and seduction, certainly did appear\nsingularly rich in Paradises.  Philanthropists, disguised as\nland-agents, contended eagerly with one another through many columns of\nadvertisements, offering a reluctant world all the advantages of rural\nhappiness on what appeared merely nominal terms.  It appeared that they\ndid not even want the money, which they mentioned only in a kind of\ngentlemanly whisper; pay them but 100 pounds in sound cash, and the\nrest might stand at mortgage upon easy terms for an indefinite period!\nOne might have imagined that the whole of rural England was\ndepopulated; that Eden itself had been cut up into building lots; that,\nin fact, the land-agent was subsidised by a paternal government to\npersuade the townsman to turn landed proprietor on terms which even the\nsquatter in new lands would regard as generous.\n\nThe reality I soon found to be entirely different.  The moment I set\nabout the deliberate business of finding a cottage I made a series of\nsurprising discoveries which I will now relate.\n\nIn the first place, I found that many of these much vaunted farmhouses\nwere situated in districts utterly destitute of beauty, and even\ndesolate.  One specimen may stand for the whole.  I omit the\nparticulars of the advertisement, which was drawn up in the usual\nstyle; but I must say, in justice to its author, that when I\ninterviewed him in his city office he did what he could to discourage\ntoo abundant hope.  He did not go the length of admitting his\ndescription false, but he told me drily that 'I had better see the\nthing for myself.'  An hour's journey found me on the Essex flats.\nThere was a bright sky and a brisk wind, but nothing could disguise the\nfeatureless monotony of the far-stretched landscape.  The train put me\ndown at a roadside station where a dogcart waited my arrival.  I drove\nthrough a small village of mean, red-brick houses, and soon found\nmyself in the open country.  My driver made but one remark during the\nfour-mile journey.\n\n'You be come to see Dawes' farm?' he said.\n\nI admitted the fact.\n\n'There's a-many has come,' he replied.  'You be the twenty-first I have\ndrove.  An' they all be uncommon glad to get away agen.'\n\n'Why?' I asked.\n\n'You'll soon find out.'\n\nWith that he lit his pipe and smoked stolidly.  I was not long in\ncomprehending the reason of his reticence.  Dawes' farm may once have\nbeen a comfortable residence, but when I saw it it was a mildewed,\nrat-haunted ruin.  It stood upon a piece of redeemed marsh-land, and\nthe salt damp of the marsh had eaten into its very vitals.  The\nwainscots were discoloured, the walls oozed, and part of the roof was\nbroken.  There had once been a garden; that, like the rest, was a ruin.\nThe land was there no doubt, fifty acres said the advertisement, but it\nwas treeless, bleak, flat, covered with coarse grass, and cut up by\nmuddy watercourses.  To have lived in the house at all it must have\nbeen rebuilt, and even then nothing could have made it a cheerful place\nof residence.  There was no water-supply that I could discover, unless\nhalf a dozen butts that took the drippings of the roof represented it.\nThe orchard had long ago gone back to barbarism.  It appeared that the\nplace had been deserted for half a dozen years.  I did not wonder.  The\nonly wonder was that it had ever been inhabited.\n\n'Ah,' repeated my driver, 'there's a-many as comes an' looks, an' they\nall be uncommon glad to get away agen.'\n\nI subscribed to the common sentiment.  Never did that infinite diapason\nwhich we call the roar of London sound so sweet, never did those long,\nlighted, busy streets seem so habitable, as on that night when I\nreturned from my casual inspection of Dawes' farm.\n\nThe memory of Dawes' farm taught me that if I was to live in the\ncountry some charm of outlook was indispensable to my content.\nMountains, a lake, a wood, a running river--some delicate effect of\nscenery, some concourse of elements, either in themselves or in their\ncombination beautiful--these I must have if I would be happy.  They\nwere as necessary to me as my daily bread.  But here I made a second\ndisquieting discovery; there was not a part of England which could be\njustly described as beautiful that was not already occupied in the\ndegree of its accessibility.  I thought of Surrey; I visited it and\nfound myself in a superior Cockney Paradise.  Half a dozen men of\ngenius had in an inadvertent moment advertised the pure air of the\nSurrey highlands, and by the time I came upon the scene trim villas had\nsprung up by hundreds, and wealth was already in possession.  The\nmerest cottage in this favoured district provoked keen contest in the\nauction-room.  Indeed, in the true sense, there were no cottages; they\nhad been transformed, added to, rebuilt, till only a remnant of their\nprimitive rusticity remained.  It was the same everywhere.  I was too\nlate by twenty years in this kind of quest.\n\nI had been led to believe by various social writers that the villages\nof England were depopulated.  According to these fallacious chroniclers\nthe country abounded in cottages and even small manor-houses from which\nthe inhabitants had fled.  I can only say I never found it so.  A\ndeserted roadside cottage I often found, but there were obvious reasons\nfor its desolation.  Sometimes it was so far from other houses, or any\ncentre of congregated life, that it must have been difficult, and\nalmost impossible, for any one residing in it to obtain the common\nnecessaries of life.  More commonly it was deserted because it was\nfalling into ruin.  But no sooner did I reach a real village than I\nfound every house in occupation.  The usual complaint was lack of\naccommodation.  Hence rents were by no means low, and the contest for\nhouses was vehement.  If the village had real beauties of its own--a\ncluster of thatched and dormer-windowed cottages, properties valuable\nto the artist--one was sure to come upon immediate evidence of the\ncockney invasion.  What I thought a barn would as like as not prove a\nstudio, and it was no farmer who lived at the pleasant, yellow-washed\nfarmhouse amid the rose-garden, but 'a gentleman from London.'  And we\nhad but to go a little way down some shady lane to find a glaring board\nannouncing building land for lease, and from some local agent one\nobtained particulars of the exact kind of house which the investor\nwould be permitted to build upon the site.\n\nIt will be said that this was not the country proper, nor was it, for\nLondon has annexed every place within fifty miles of Charing Cross.\nBut in the country proper a new difficulty met me: not only were there\nno empty cottages, but landowners stuck to their acres with such\njealous obstinacy that they refused to sell a rood of land for a\ncottage on any terms whatever.  I will give one example, which may be\ntaken as typical.  There was a Welsh valley where I had once spent a\nsummer holiday, exquisitely retired and beautiful--a dozen miles from\nthe nearest railway.  Beyond the green strath, with its few white\ncottages and farms, rose on every side the wide hills, with Snowdon\ntowering over all like a dome.   The hillside land had but a prairie\nvalue.  It had never been cultivated.  A few sheep strayed over it; but\nfor months together no human foot trod its heather, or wandered by its\nvociferous cascades.  One would have supposed that had any one offered\nto build a house on these solitary hillsides, the owner of the land\nwould have been only too glad to have fostered a folly that would have\nproved remunerative to himself.  On the contrary, the two great\nlandowners of the district stuck to every inch of soil as if it had\nbeen sown with gold.  The land was quite useless, as I have said.  It\nmight have been worth three pounds an acre--yet they refused fifty.\nThey would not even let on lease.  Nor could it be pretended that the\nscenery would have lost any element of its charm by a cottage that\nwould have been scarcely observed on those vast slopes of Snowdon.\nJealous obstinacy, the desire to keep intact their own, the desire to\nkeep out all intruders--this was the temper of the landowners.  They\ndid all they could to harass their existing tenants.  A tenant whose\nfamily had increased so that his cottage was as overcrowded as a\ntenement in Spitalfields, had to plead long before he was allowed to\nadd a couple of rooms to his cottage, even when he did so at his own\nexpense.  Often enough he was refused so harshly, that he was\nconstrained to seek a house in some other district.  Yet, in all that\nvalley, which was five miles long by two in breadth, there were not two\nhundred houses; and there rose around them the unpopulated hillside,\nwhere a host of people might have lived in health, and where, indeed,\nmen had once lived, as was witnessed by the roofless gables which here\nand there rose among the heather.\n\nIt seems to me that in this state of things there is a monstrous\ninjustice.  There is no law to compel these gentlemen to sell land, and\nthere is no public sentiment that can affect them.  They are the\ncomplete despots of the countryside.  If a man does not like their\ndomination, he leaves the district; he knows that it is vain to resist\nit.  In this way many rural districts are depopulated, or kept\nunder-populated, simply to gratify the selfish temper of a great\nproprietor.  It is not as though he lived in the district, and wished\nto keep its beauties secret to himself; often enough he visits it so\nrarely that his face is not known among his tenants.  No; but he must\nhave everything to himself; he must round off his estate; he must look\nfrom his park on nothing which is not his; for your rural Ahab could\nnot sleep with a Naboth's little vineyard even a mile away.  It is\nuseless to tell him that the land you want is waste natural land, on\nwhich you propose to confer value; he prefers that it shall be\nvalueless, rather than that it shall be yours.  Before population can\nbe re-distributed to the advantage of town and country alike, this\ndifficulty must be overcome.  It can only be overcome by drastic\nlegislation.  Compulsory purchase, regulated by an equitable land\ncourt, is the only remedy; and it is hard that Irishmen should have,\nand grumble over, privileges which their English brethren would receive\nwith open arms.\n\nSuch were some of the discoveries which I made when I came to the real\nbusiness of finding a humble country residence.  In my ignorance and\ninexperience it had seemed the easiest thing in the world.  After a\nfortnight of experiment I began to think it was the hardest.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nI FIND MY COTTAGE\n\nIn the meantime a circumstance had occurred which was of great\nimportance to me.  Some enterprising spirits had started a new weekly\nlocal paper, and--_mirabile dictu_--they actually contemplated a\nliterary page!  With a faith in suburban culture, so unprecedented as\nto be almost sublime, these daring adventurers proposed giving their\nreaders reviews of books, literary gossip, and general information\nabout the doings of eminent writers.  They offered the work to me at\nthe modest honorarium of two pounds a week, and were willing to give me\na three years' agreement.  They were frank enough to acknowledge that\ntheir journal was likely to die of 'superiority to its public,' long\nbefore the three years were over; but, barring this disaster, they gave\nme assurance of regular employment.  This was the very thing for me.\nOne could write about books anywhere.  I thankfully closed with the\noffer and began to study the ha'-penny evening papers with assiduity,\nin order to learn the craft of manufacturing biographies of living\nauthors.\n\nThe greatest of all questions was thus settled: I should not starve.\nBut the question of a local habitation remained as difficult as ever.\nI went upon wild-goose chases innumerable; was the victim of every kind\nof chance hint; gathered fallacious information from garrulous\nthird-class passengers on many railways; confided my case to carters\nand rural postmen, who played upon my innocence with genial malice;\nstayed so long at village public-houses without visible motive that I\nincurred the suspicion of the local constabulary, and on one memorable\noccasion found myself identified with a long watched-for robber of\nlocal hen-roosts.  When I dropped upon some quaint village that, from a\npictorial point of view, seemed to offer all that I desired, I found my\ntale, that I wished to settle in it, universally derided.  No one could\nconceive any sane person as being desirous of living in a village; the\ndesign seemed wholly unaccountable to people who themselves would have\nbeen only too glad to live in towns.\n\nThat I came from London was against me, It seemed to these village\nDaniels barely possible that I was honest, and quite certain that I\ncloaked some base designs under an innocent inquiry for empty cottages.\nThe little black bag in which I carried my lunch on these excursions\nwas the object of extraordinary hypotheses.  At one time I was believed\nto be selling tracts, at another time, tea; once I was suspected of\nbeing an itinerant anarchist, doing a brisk business in infernal\nmachines.  Landladies, who had lavished smiles upon me when they\nsupposed me an ordinary pedestrian in search of the picturesque, gave\nme the cold shoulder when I began to explain my genuine intentions.\nThey sometimes treated me with such a mixture of aversion and alarm\nthat it was plain they doubted not only my sincerity but my sanity.\nThe travelling artist they knew, the pedlar, the insurance agent, and\nthe cockney beanfeaster; but the stranger who desired permanent\nneighbourship with them they knew not; him they treated as a lunatic at\nlarge.  If the papers had chanced to be full at this time of the doings\nof some flagrant murderer flying from justice, which fortunately for me\nthey were not, I have little doubt that these amiable villagers would\nhave delivered me up to the police without scruple, and have chuckled\nover their sagacity.\n\nThe thing was amusing enough, and yet it had a certain serious\nsignificance.  It was a striking illustration of the way in which the\ngrowth of cities had perverted even the rural mind.  I had thoughts of\nwriting an article on _The Reluctant Villagers_, and a very good\narticle I could have made of it; for I found hardly any one who was a\nvillager by choice.  A village might appear fair as Paradise to the\ncasual eye; but closer inspection always revealed the serpent of\ndiscontent among the flowers.  Where every outward object breathed of\nrest, there was universal restlessness among the people.  The common\nambition of all the younger generation was to get to London by almost\nany means, and in almost any capacity.  There was not a household that\nhad not children or relatives in London.  The young ploughman went to\nLondon as a carter or ostler; the milkmaid as a servant.  The village\ncarpenter was invariably a middle-aged or an old man, secretly despised\nby his apprentice, if he had one, for his contentment with his lot.\nOne saw very few young people in the village street, except mere\nchildren.  The universal complaint was that life was dull.  There were\nno libraries or reading-rooms; no concerts or entertainments; even the\ninnocuous penny-reading had died out.  Nor were there cricket clubs, or\nany organised system of sport, except in isolated cases.  Here and\nthere a modern-minded clergyman had recognised the need of recreation\nin his parishioners, and had done something to provide for it; but he\nwas an exception.  Hence it happened that the public-house was the\ncommon centre of the village life: it was the poor man's club, and it\nwas used less for purposes of social intercourse than for the\ndiscussing of racing odds.\n\nArtists have often painted village politicians in earnest confabulation\nin an oak-pannelled inn-parlour.  I can only say that, so far as my\nexperience went, I found the village politician quite extinct.  The\nsort of talk I heard in village bar-rooms was inane and contemptible to\nthe last degree, and it never once touched on politics.  Nor, as a\nrule, was there any trace of that leaven of superior intelligence which\ncomes from a fusion of the classes.  All the landlords were practically\nnon-resident.  They knew nothing of their tenants; and that pleasant\nintercourse between hall and cottage which poets and novelists depict,\nrarely happened.  Once a year, perhaps, and for a few weeks only, the\nblinds of the Hall windows were drawn up; carriages rolled through the\npark gates; young ladies, bright in Bond Street toilets, flashed like\ndeities upon the village street; my Lady Bountiful left a quarter of a\npound of tea at half a dozen cottages; and then the whole vision faded\nlike an unsubstantial pageant.  The blinds were drawn down again, the\nlodge-keeper went to sleep, and the monotonies of life submerged\neverything like a wave.  The clergyman alone remained as the symbol of\na fuller life, sometimes doing his duty with intelligence, sometimes\nnot; but the case was rare where any definite attempt was made to\nuplift the village community by the infusion of any intellectual\ninterest, any sense of Art, or any care for honest sport.  And here\nlies the whole secret of the discontent of villages; their inhabitants\nare conscious of unjust deprivations in their lot; and if they remain\nvillagers, it is rather from lethargy than love.\n\nWere I to describe all the places I visited in search of a habitation,\nmy list would be interminable.  I have given one example in Dawes'\nFarm; let me give one other, as illustrating another kind of difficulty\nin my quest.\n\nOn an exquisite morning in June I found myself climbing the long chalk\nhills that lie northward of the Thames valley.  At every step the air\nbecame more pure and sparkling; and while in the hazy lowlands not a\nleaf stirred, here a brisk and gusty breeze was blowing.  The road ran\nthrough high chalk banks, like a railway cutting, and I have since\nfound that Roman soldiers used it in the days of Caesar.  At the height\nof three hundred feet authentic forest scenery began.  Here the elms\nceased, and enormous woods of beech took their place.  The turf was of\nthe greenest, the solitude intense, the air exhilarating; and never had\nI so admired the lace-like delicacy of foliage which distinguishes the\nbeech, for never had I seen it in such mass or such perfection.  The\nhouse I sought stood at fully eight hundred feet above sea-level, on a\ncarpet of soft turf, round which the forest rose like a wall.  Never\ndid place look so sweetly habitable; it was a kind of green hermitage\nin the woods, inimitably quiet, warmed by clearest sunlight, cooled by\nfreshest winds.  Here, said I, at last is my much sought El Dorado; nor\ndid the cottage, when I came to it, belie my hopes.  It was a true\nwoodland cottage, an intimate part and parcel of the scenery.  It had\nbeen recently inhabited by a man of letters, a poet and a dreamer; and\na fitter spot to dream in eye never rested on.\n\nMy enthusiasm rose as I drew nearer to it, There was a warm, homely\ncompactness about it, as of a nest among the trees.  The forest turf\ncame to the very gate; a young orchard of five hundred trees lay to the\nsouthward of the house, a green paddock to the northward; and, as my\nadvertisement informed me, the entire price of this eligible freehold\nproperty was five hundred pounds!  Why, then, was its possessor so\neager to be quit of it?  I walked round the house, went through its\nrooms, took the view from various windows, already treating it as mine,\nand it was long before I came upon the cause.  That cause was not its\nremoteness or its solitude; it was lack of water.  There was no well,\nand to have sunk a well would have been costly.  The only water-supply\nwas the rain-water from the roofs.  Men can laugh at a good many\ndeprivations, but deprivation of water is a serious business.  I found\nupon inquiry that the nearest spring was two miles away.  In time of\ndrought--and in this high district summer drought was normal--it was\nthis or nothing.  Water was then sold by the bucket, nor was it easy to\nfind any one to fetch and carry for you.  I had no mind to condemn\nmyself to drink the droppings of a roof for life, nor to perform my\nablutions by the aid of a teacup and a saucer.  The place, for all its\nbeauty, was plainly uninhabitable as the Sahara.  A camel might have\nlived there with content; it was no place for a family used to the\ndelights of tubbing.  I had remarked in the owner of the house a\ncertain elementary lack of linen; the cause was now explained.  I think\nhis only method of attaining cleanliness must have been by what is\ncalled 'the dry air process.'\n\nThis adventure lives in my memory, not only because it had delightful\nelements, but because it was the last of a long series, which might\nhave been called more truthfully misadventures.  For an exhilarating\nmonth I scoured the neighbourhood of London, living in a happy fever of\nenterprise and hope, but without result.  July came, and my problem was\nstill unsolved.   I had already given notice to terminate the tenancy\nof my house in London, and there seemed a fair prospect that September\nwould find me homeless.  At my present height of good spirits I cannot\nsay that even this prospect dismayed me.  If the worst came to the\nworst I meant to take to the road in one of those convenient vans much\nused by travelling hawkers.  I had long envied the extraordinary\nsnugness of those itinerant habitations; to be a Dr. Marigold seemed\nthe happiest of fates; rent free, and finally delivered from\ntax-collectors and their tribe, I might yet roam the world as a\nsuperior kind of vagrant.  I knew indeed a young friend of mine who had\nadopted this very life.  He sold tracts and Bibles upon village greens,\nand I promise you no mansion had a warmer glow of comfort than the\ninterior of his yellow van when the lamp was lit at night for supper.\nHe has since found his way to a lonely missionary station in Peru; but\nhe has often told me that he was never happier than when he played the\npart of pious gipsy on the village greens of England.  At a pinch I\nthought that I could do what he had done; it was a romantic trade, and\na new _Lavengro_ might be written on it.\n\nBut whatever dreams of permanent and dedicated vagrancy I might\nentertain, manifestly my first duty was to find a cottage if I could.\nAt last, and almost by accident, I came on what I wanted.  I had gone\nto the Lake District in the month of August, and one day I struck into\na lonely road to the north-west of Buttermere.  Half an hour's walk\nbrought me to a tiny hamlet beside a rushing stream, and here, for the\nfirst time in all my wanderings, I found a genuine deserted cottage.\nTo speak by the book there were two cottages exactly similar, covered\nby a single roof.  They stood upon a gentle slope; a group of pines\nformed a shelter from the north, the moorland rose behind them, and the\nriver sang through a contiguous glen.  My first glance told me that\nthey had not long been out of occupation.  They showed no marks of\ndilapidation, and the little gardens, though weed-grown, gave signs of\nrecent care.  A woman whom I met told me their history.  They had long\nbeen inhabited by two families, father and son.  A few months\npreviously these families had sailed for Canada.  No one had applied\nfor the cottages, for in that part work was scarce, and the foundries\nand shipyards on the coast drew away the younger population.  The\nrent--it seemed incredible--was two shillings a week.  The woman\nyielded to what she thought my idle curiosity, and brought me the keys.\nEach cottage contained four rooms, and the two could easily be thrown\ninto one.  They were dry and water-tight, the walls whitewashed and\nclean, the woodwork sound and well cared for.  I sat down upon the\nsun-warmed bank beside the gate and thought.  Here was solitude indeed;\na dozen neighbours in all, simple labouring folk:\n\n\n  The silence that is in the starry sky,\n  The sleep that is among the lonely hills.\n\n\nHere, too, was beauty in excess; a glen untrodden by the feet of\ntourists, moorland and pine-wood, a stream that lifted up a cheerful\nvoice, hills and mountains of delightful form and colour, and not far\naway the silver gleam of lakes.  In all external features it was my\ndream come true, and the deep-bosomed woman at my side, with her face\nof rosy, placid health, was herself the proof of how lightly the wings\nof time passed over this haunt of ancient peace.\n\nI suppose that no one ever approaches the realisation of his hopes\nwithout a kind of fear.  In those imaginary dramas which we invent and\nrehearse perpetually in the silent theatre of our own minds, we always\ntake care that we get the best of the situation and the dialogue.  The\ndramas of real life are apt to end differently.  The coveted occasion\nfinds us incapable; a baffling scepticism of our own powers leaves us\nimpotent; the part that ran so easily, with such unanimous applause,\nwhen we were both the dramatist and the actor, suddenly bristles with a\nhundred unsuspected difficulties.  For the first time, as I sat on that\nsunny bank, I began to ask myself whether I could really play the part\nI had so long desired to play.  Could I reconcile myself to seclusion\nso entire?  Would not this weight of utter silence grow heavier than I\ncould bear?  It was not always June, I told myself, and there were days\nof lashing rain, grey skies, and 'death-dumb autumn dripping' fog to\nthink of.  The vision of lighted streets and bustling crowds, the warm\ncontiguity of numbers, the long lines of windows all aglow at evening,\nthe genial stir and tumult of congregated life, took masterful\npossession of my mind.  Could I bear to relinquish the familiar scene?\nA thousand threads of use and habit bound me to it, each in itself as\nlight as gossamer, but the whole tough as cords of steel.  I foresaw\nthat I had underestimated the ease of my deliverance.   It would\nrequire a strength of consistent resolution of which perhaps I was not\ncapable.  It was but too likely that I should be one of those who put\ntheir hand to the plough and look back, a reluctant recruit of a cause\nthat won my faith, but could not win my will.  This would be not only\nfatal to my peace, it would make me despicable in my own eyes, which is\nthe worst of all calamities that man can suffer.\n\nSuch a distress of mind was natural; yet I think that behind it all my\nthought was firm and clear.  What I had proposed to do for twenty years\nI must do, or attempt to do, if I would retain my self-respect.  I\nmight become despicable to myself by failure in my task, but I should\nbe much more despicable by never trying to accomplish it.  In that\nhalf-hour of meditation the die was cast.  I had come to my predestined\nbattlefield.  I must here be triumphant or defeated; in any case I must\nattempt the conflict.\n\nThe decision restored, as by a stroke of magic, all my good spirits.  I\nexamined my two cottages again with an eye less critical, more kindly,\nmore urbane.  I saw with how few touches they could be transformed into\na habitation suited to my needs.  With the two main rooms thrown into\none I should have a spacious living-room; the two gardens would compose\nan admirable lawn; roses should grow against the walls, warm-hued\ncreepers frame the upper windows; it should become a lodge in Eden.\nThen there was the air, the view, the company of the silent mountains\nand the singing stream.  Here was my theatre, my orchestra, my\nconcert-room.  The woman who was my guide took me into her own cottage\nfor a cup of tea, and I was struck with its homely air of comfort.  An\noak dresser, covered with blue ware such as is common in these parts,\nfilled one wall; an oak chest of drawers another; there was a\nbroad-seated oak settle by the fire; all solid, of a good design, and\npolished to a deep brown by use and industry.  The floor was red brick;\nflowers lined the windows; and everything was clean as hands could make\nit.  I saw my house furnished on the same plan, and it pleased me.  A\nrecollection crossed my mind, curious and most fantastic at such a\ntime, of a certain room in one of the show-houses in London, furnished\nentirely in the French style.  I recalled the console tables of old\ngilt, the brocaded couch, and the gilded chairs which no one dared to\nsit upon; and I confess that I preferred this habitable cottage-room.\nThere was something satisfying in its plainness; a sense of something\nhonest and intimately right; a suggestion of solid worth and homely\nease.  My spirits had already been restored by my decision; they were\nnow invigorated to the point of joy, for I saw the concrete emblems, as\nit were, of the beauty which is found in true simplicity.\n\nThe next day I returned to the spot accompanied by my wife and my two\nboys.  We made a new and elaborate inspection of the two cottages.  In\nthe afternoon the landlord, a neighbouring farmer, met us.  He was a\ndales-man born and bred, shrewd, much given to silence, but with a\nplenitude of genial good sense.  He began by being somewhat suspicious\nof us after the usual country fashion.  When he at last understood the\nsincerity and novelty of our intentions, he treated us with a kind of\nfatherly derision, which had no hint of impoliteness or impertinence in\nit.  'It will na do, I'm thinking,' he said, several times.  When he\nsaw us persistent, and that our persistence grew in the ratio of his\ndissuasion, he said, just as though he were talking to wayward\nchildren, 'Well, a wilful man maun have his way.  As for my bit of\ncottages, ye're welcome to them, an' I'll ask no rent till ye've been\nin them long enough to know your own minds better.  They're of no worth\nto me, an' I'll be your debtor for living in them.  If ye want to pull\nthem aboot, ye'll do it at your own expense, I'm willing.  Later on, if\nye care to stay, you and me'll fix a rent, an' I gie ye ma word it\nshall na be more than ten pund a year.  I'll help ye too if ye'll let\nme.  I can find ye a man as 'll do all the little jobs you want done,\nan' glad to do it.  As for fishing, the stream's yours, an' I would na\nsay but what ye might get some shooting too.  But ye'll tire of it,\nye'll tire of it,' he concluded, with a grave smile.\n\nWith that he handed us the keys.  He then shook our hands with the\nmelancholy air of a man who says farewell to friends embarked upon a\nperilous adventure, and strode away across the heather, stopping once\nto wave his hand to us as if in wise dissuasion.\n\nSo Mahomet might have stood above Damascus when he said, 'My Paradise\nis not there,' and yet Damascus was a Paradise all the same.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nBUYING HAPPINESS\n\nWe are all children, and in nothing so much perhaps as in the kind of\ndelight we take in any form of building.  The architectural efforts of\na child with a box of bricks or a heap of sand explain the Tower of\nBabel, the Pyramids, and the Golden House of Nero.  House-building\nunites the ideal with the real more thoroughly than any other human\nemployment.  What can there be more delightful than to see that which\nyou have dreamed grow into tangible and enduring form?  No wonder the\nrich man builds himself 'a lordly pleasure-house'; it is a kind of\npractical poetry which he can understand.  Were there only millionaires\nenough to go round all architects would be wealthy, for building is a\nkind of material art admirably suited to men of material intelligence.\n\nThe weeks which followed the acquisition of my two deserted cottages\nwere the most delightful I have ever spent.  First of all, there was\nthe question of structural alterations to be considered.  In my opinion\nthe living-room of the house is the chief consideration.  It should be\na _room to live in_, the focus of the whole life of the household.  For\nthis reason it should be large and airy, covering the whole site of the\nhouse as nearly as possible.  One large room is infinitely to be\npreferred to two or three small rooms; it is healthier, and much more\ncheerful.  Space and air are most needed in the room which is most in\nuse.  It is of no consequence that the bedrooms should be small; one's\nactive hours are not spent in them, and a window left wide open summer\nand winter will provide an ample supply of oxygen in the smallest\nchamber.  What can be more absurd than the arrangement of a modern\nLondon villa?  It is usually cut up by partition walls into a number of\nsmall rooms, not more than one of which is in constant use.  Pretension\ntakes the place of comfort.  Mrs. Grundy must have a 'drawing-room' or\ndie!  It is a kind of holiest of holies, too beautiful for normal\noccupation, full of gimcrack chairs that cannot be sat upon, and\ndecorative futilities which give it the aspect of a miscellaneous stall\nat a 'rummage sale.'  Such a room is very well as a _with_drawing-room,\nits proper use; but as a room into which no one withdraws it is absurd.\nAs I expected to keep no company, and needed no room into which to\nwithdraw, I was able to get rid of this apartment.  Moreover, in a very\nsmall house, common sense demanded that every room should be really and\nthoroughly used.\n\nFortunately the fireplaces of my two cottages were against the outer or\ngable ends, and not against the partition wall, as is commonly the\ncase.  I had only to remove this partition wall, supporting the ceiling\nby a strong beam, and I had a room about twenty-four long by fifteen in\nbreadth.  At the back of this room were two small kitchens, only one of\nwhich was needed.  By widening the doorway leading to one of them to\ndouble its breadth, I gained another room about ten feet square.  This\nmade my library, by which I mean not a room in which I ever sat, but a\nroom entirely devoted to the housing of my books.  I had the walls\nentirely lined with books, making and staining the bookshelves with my\nown hands.   Across the widened doorway from which the door had been\nremoved hung a warm curtain, so that it was to all intents and purposes\na part of my living-room.  I took infinite and almost childish delight\nin the arrangement of this living-room.  I had brought not a single\narticle of domestic furniture with me from London.  Such furniture as I\nhad--chairs, tables, couch, sideboard, and so forth--would have looked\nout of place in the country, and moreover it was better economy to sell\nthem.  I sold them very well in a London auction-room, getting almost\nas much as they cost me.  With the money thus received in my pocket I\nwent to a neighbouring market town where there happened to be a shop\nthat dealt in old furniture.  For less than ten pounds I bought an\nexcellent oaken gate-table, half a dozen serviceable oak chairs, a\ncouple of fine carved chests, and a corner cupboard.  My oak dresser\nand settle, each good specimens of serviceable cottage furniture, cost\nme thirty-seven shillings at a country auction.  I found that even at\nthese modest prices I had paid too much.  Oaken furniture was common in\nthese parts, and had little value.  When a church was restored, or an\nold house re-constructed, large quantities of old oak were literally\nthrown away.  Thus, at a merely nominal expense I acquired enough\ncarved oak to fit together into a handsome fireplace, and later on the\npews of a church came in for oak panelling.\n\nLet me now picture my living-room as it was about four months after I\ntook possession.  It was entirely oak panelled to a height of nine\nfeet, above which about a foot of white-washed wall showed, forming a\nplain frieze.  The fireplace at one end of the room was built in with\ncarved oak; what had been the corresponding fireplace at the other end\nof the room was turned into a cupboard, with plain oak doors.  The room\nhad three old-fashioned leaded windows opening outward.  Two were\noriginal, one had been added--the centre window taking the place of the\ngap left by the destroyed partition wall.  My oak chests, dresser and\ncupboard, constituted the furniture of the room.  The library,\ncurtained off with a plain curtain of crimson plush, adjoined; the\nkitchen door opened at the east corner of the room.  The windows faced\ndue south.  The room therefore was always sunny.  The floor-boards were\nstained, and covered by two or three cheap rugs.  Flowers were at the\nwindows, a vase of flowers always on the table.  The fireplace was\nopen, for I had removed the ugly modern grate, substituting for it a\nlow hearth of red brick with iron dogs, on which wood could be burned.\nThis room, with the adjoining library, was the great feature of my\nlittle house.\n\nThe other rooms in the house required no alteration; fresh whitewash\nand wall-papers soon transformed them; and although they were small,\nthey were not devoid of charm.  When my scheme of adaptation was\ncomplete I found myself possessed of a house containing one beautiful\nliving-room, a small library, a kitchen, and four good bedrooms.  My\nbill for labour, including the mason's work in the removal of the\npartition wall, the building of a new window, and the laying of a fresh\nhearth; the carpenter's work in fitting my oak, and various minor\nrepairs, amounted in all to about twelve pounds.  The cost of my\nfurniture, including the oak panelling in the living-room, and all that\nwas needed for the bedrooms, was about fifty pounds, against which I\nhad to set thirty-eight pounds, received from the sale of my\nsuperfluous effects in London.  If I added to these sums the general\nexpenses of removal, the carriage and cartage of my goods, and so\nforth, which I reckoned at ten pounds, I found that the cost of my\nexodus and new tenancy had been as follows:--\n\n\n                                       L.   s.   d.\n  By expenses of removal  . . . . . .  10   0    0\n  By alterations and labour . . . . .  12   0    0\n  By cost of furniture for living-room\n    and four bedrooms . . . . . . . .  50   0    0\n                                       -----------\n                                      L72   0    0\n  Against which, by sale of goods in\n    London  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  38   0    0\n                                       -----------\n  Leaving total outlay of . . . . . . L34   0    0\n                                       -----------\n\n\nI am conscious that to a townsman, accustomed to the wastefulness of\ntowns, some parts of this account must appear incredible.  Take, for\ninstance, the bill for labour.  No one has ever lived in London without\nhaving occasion to complain of the dearness and badness of labour.  The\nchief object of the town artisan is to do as little work as possible.\nHe is absolutely without conscience in his work, and all that he does\nis slovenly.  He surveys a job, and meditates upon it for an hour--at\nyour expense; begins it, and goes away to fetch a tool that he has\nforgotten--the time of his absence being duly charged against you;\nprocrastinates and dawdles; sits down to read the paper, if no one\nwatches him; and in one way and another takes quite twice as long over\na job as is needed, and then does it badly.  When I first became a\nhouseholder in London I naturally sent to some neighbouring employer of\nlabour for any little jobs of carpentering and plumbing that needed to\nbe done.  I soon had to relinquish the practice.  If a new latch were\nput upon a window, the screws were driven into the old holes, so that\nin a week the latch was off again.  If the plumber effected one repair\nhe invariably left some damage that made it necessary to recall him\nbefore the month was out.  There are houses in London which must be as\ngood as an annuity to local tradesmen; I believe the workmen are\ninstructed to do their work so badly that it is never really done.  I\nsoon found it wise to learn how to do repairs for myself; and it was by\ndoing them myself that I discovered how I had been victimised by the\nrapacity, dishonesty, and inefficiency of the British workman and his\nmaster.\n\nBut in the country things are different.  The village workman has\nhonest pride in his reputation, and in his work.  Moreover, he can turn\nhis hand to anything, he does not grudge his time, and he is not\ncorrupted by the contiguity of the public-house.  The man who did my\nmasonry work for me was a grey-haired, silent, pertinacious fellow, of\ngreat practical intelligence and efficiency.  He did not work rapidly,\nbut all that he did was thoroughly done.  The carpenter was a man of\nthe same type.  He took a genuine delight in fitting my oak to its new\nuses, and had ideas of his own, which were often ingenious, and always\npractical.  He even had a true artistic sense; uncultivated for want of\neducation, but real.  I understood the extraordinary skill of mediaeval\ncraftsmen through my association with this man.  The pieces of\nexquisite carved oak which find their way into museums to-day were\nwrought by men such as he was; quiet, thoughtful men, residing in\nvillages, who developed their artistic sense in solitude.  I am quite\nsure that this man thought a great deal more of his work than of the\nmoney he earned by it.  At all events he charged me astonishingly\nlittle.  He refused a contract, evidently regarding it as implying\nsuspicions of his honesty.  'I'll charge ye what's fair,' he said, 'and\nyou and me'll not quarrel as to the price.'  If my bill for labour was\nso moderate that it seems absurd to a townsman, it was because I had to\ndeal with honest craftsmen, who brought not only efficiency and\nhandiness to their work, but a high sense of honour, and a real\nintelligence and interest.\n\nIt was in the end of August when I took my house; by the beginning of\nDecember I had completed my work upon it.  The gardens in front of the\nhouse had been levelled, and covered with the finest mountain turf.\nThe walls had been colour-washed a warm yellow, and all the\nwindow-frames painted white.  For three months every hour had been\nbusy, and not the least blessing of my toil was that it had brought me\na degree of physical vigour such as I had never yet enjoyed.  How\ndifferent were my sensations when I woke in the morning now from those\nwhich I had known in London!  In London the hour of rising had\ninvariably found me languid and reluctant.  I woke with the sense of a\nload upon me, and I dreaded the long grey day.  I see now that these\nsensations were not so much mental as physical.  I had not mental\nbuoyancy simply because I was deficient in physical vitality.  But at\nThornthwaite I woke eager for the day.  The first sounds that greeted\nme through the open window were the songs of the birds, the sea-like\ndiapason of the wind in the elm-trees on the lawn, and the animating\nsong of the river in the glen.  The weather during the whole of that\nautumn was extraordinarily fine.  After a week of equinoctial storm in\nthe end of September, the weather settled into exquisite repose.  Day\nsucceeded day, calm, bright, sunny.  It was as warm as August, but with\nall the tonic freshness of autumn.  November, usually a month of misery\nin London, was here delightful.  The year died slowly, amid the pomp of\ncrimson leaves and bronzed bracken.  For the first time I understood\nthat it is bliss to be alive.  Like the child whom Wordsworth\ncelebrates, I felt my life in every limb.  There was no goading of dull\npowers to unwelcome tasks; energy ran free, like the mountain-stream at\nmy door, and the zest of life was strong in me.\n\nI never came downstairs into my living-room without a sense of new\ndelight.  How beautiful, how sweetly habitable it looked in the morning\nsunshine!  Any one living in a city, who immediately on rising enters\nthe room which he has used overnight, has noticed the peculiar\nstaleness of the atmosphere.  It is not exactly a noxious atmosphere;\nthere is no palpable unpleasant odour in it, but it is used up, it is\nstale.  He will also notice the dust which rests on everything.  In a\ncity the daily grinding of millions of wheels over thousands of miles\nof roads fills the air with an acrid, almost impalpable powder, which\nfinds its way even through closed windows and settles upon everything.\nIn my London house I could not take up a book without soiled fingers.\nEven books which were protected by glass doors, and papers shut up in\ndrawers, did not escape this filthy powder, composed of the fine-ground\ndust and excrement of the London streets.  If I wiped a picture with a\nwhite silk handkerchief, a black stain showed itself upon the\nhandkerchief, and this in spite of the most careful efforts to keep the\nhouse clean.  I suppose Londoners get used to dirt, as eels are said to\nget used to skinning.  They spend their time in washing their hands,\nbut with the most transient gain of cleanliness.  No one knows how\nfilthy London is till he begins to notice how much longer\nwindow-curtains, household draperies, and personal linen keep clean in\nthe country.  I should not like to be called an old maid, but I confess\nto an old-maidish care for cleanliness.  Untidiness in books or papers\nwould not distress me, but dirt is a real distress; and if it be\nold-maidish to fight a continual battle with dirt, to scour and polish\nand dust, content with nothing less than immaculate purities of\npolished surface, then I suppose I am an old maid, and I count it to\nmyself for righteousness.\n\nAmid the many miseries of cities, this no doubt is but a minor misery,\nbut the relief which I experienced in deliverance from it was\ndisproportionately great.  The purity and freshness of the atmosphere,\nthe corresponding cleanliness of all I touched in the house, were\ndelightful to me, and added to my self-respect.  The clean, aromatic\nair passed like a ceaseless lustration through every room of the house.\nThe very bed-linen, bleached in the open air, had acquired the\nfragrance of mountain thyme and lavender.  I did not need to climb the\nhill to find the pine-woods; they grew round the very table where I\nate.  Four walls and a roof gave me shelter, yet I lived in the open\nair all the time.\n\nThen there was also the silence, at first so strange as to be almost\noppressive, but later on sweeter than music.  It was at early morning\nand nightfall that this silence was most intense.  On a still night one\ncould almost hear the earth move, and fancy that the stars diffused a\ngentle crackling noise as of rushing flame.  The fall of an acorn in a\npine wood startled the ear like an explosion.  The river also was\ndiscerned as having a definite rhythm of its own.  It ran up and down a\nperpetual scale, like a bird singing.  What had seemed a heavy confused\nsound of falling water resolved itself into regular harmonies, which\ncould have been written down in musical notation.  At times there was\nalso in the air the sense of breathing.  On a dark night, standing at\nmy door, I had the sense of a great heart that beat in the obscurity,\nof a bosom that rose and fell, of a pulse as regular as a clock.  I\nthink that the ear must have recovered a fine sensitiveness, normal to\nit under normal conditions, but lost or dulled amid the deafening roar\nof towns.  It is scarcely an exaggeration when poets speak of hearing\nthe grass grow; we could hear it, no doubt, if the ear were not stunned\nby more violent sounds.\n\nIt is probable that mere increase of vitality in itself is sufficient\nto account for this new delicacy of the physical senses.  The senses\nadapt themselves to their environment.  An example of this is found in\nthe absence of what is called long sight among city children.  Having\nno extensive horizon constantly before the eye, the power of discerning\ndistant objects gradually decays.  On the contrary a child brought up\nupon the African veldt, where he is daily confronted with almost\ninfinite distances, acquires what seems to be an almost preternatural\nsharpness of vision.  It is the same with hearing.  The savage can\ndistinguish sounds which are entirely inaudible to the civilised man.\nThe footfall of his enemy, the beat of a horse's hoofs, the movement of\na lion in the jungle, are heard at what appear impossible distances.  I\ndo not seek to offer any absolute explanation of these phenomena as\nregards myself, but I state the fact that in returning to a natural\nlife I found a remarkable quickening of my physical senses.  As my eye\nbecame accustomed to the wide moorland prospects I found myself\nincreasingly able to discriminate distant objects.  Flowers that had\nseemed to me to smell pretty much alike, now had distinct fragrances.\nI knew when I woke in the morning from which direction the wind came,\nby its odour; the wind from the moorland brought the scent of heather\nand wild thyme, the wind from the glen the scent of water.\n\nIt was the same with sound.  Properly speaking there is no such thing\nas silence in Nature.  The silence, or what seems silence, is divisible\ninto a multitude of minute sounds.  Everything in Nature is toiling and\nstraining at its task, the sap in the tree, the rock balanced on its\nbed of clay, the grass-blade pushing and urging its way toward the sun.\nAnd as there is no real silence, so there is no real solitude in a\nworld where every atom is vigorously at work.  Wordsworth's conception\nof Nature as a Presence becomes at once intelligible when we live close\nto the heart of Nature.  Had Wordsworth lived in towns his poetry could\nnever have been written, nor can its central conception of Nature as a\nPresence be understood by the townsman.  I had often enough read the\nwonderful lines--\n\n\n        And I have felt\n  A presence that disturbs me with the joy\n  Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime\n  Of something far more deeply interfused,\n  Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,\n  And the round ocean, and the living air,\n  And the blue sky, and in the mind of man\n  _A motion and a spirit_, that impels\n  All thinking things, all objects of all thought,\n  And rolls through all things.\n\n\nBut I never really understood them till I lived among scenes similar to\nthose in which they were composed.  And the organ by which they were\ninterpreted was not the mind so much as the senses, quickened and\ninvigorated by solitude.  I presented a more sensitive surface to\nNature, and the instant result was the perception of Nature as of\nsomething alive.  In the silence of the night, as I stood at my door, I\nfelt the palpitation of a real life around me; the sense, as I have\nsaid, of a breathing movement, of pulsation, of a beating heart, and\nthen I knew that Wordsworth wrote with strict scientific accuracy, and\nnot with vague mysticism as is commonly supposed, when he described\nNature as a living Presence.\n\nThe sum of these sensations was for me a state of physical beatitude.\nI was often reminded of the grim confession of the poor wastrel, who,\nwhen asked where he lived, replied, 'I don't live, I linger.'  I had\nnever really lived; I had lingered.  I had trodden the path of the days\nand years with reluctant feet.  Now every daybreak was a new occasion\nof joy to me.  I was rejuvenated not only in mind, but in the very core\nand marrow of my body.  I had put myself in right relation to Nature; I\nhad established contact, as electricians would say; and as a\nconsequence all the electric current of Nature flowed through me,\nvitalising and quickening me in every nerve.  Men who live in cities\nare but half alive.  They mistake infinite contortion for life.  Life\nconsists in the efficient activity of every part of us, each part\nequally efficient, and moving in a perfect rhythm.  For the first time,\nsince I had been conscious of myself, I realised this entire efficiency.\n\nMany times I had coveted what is called 'rude health,' but I had been\nled to believe that rude health implies lack of sensitiveness.  I now\nfound the reverse to be the case.  Perfect health and perfect\nsensitiveness are the same thing.  I felt, enjoyed, and received\nsensations more acutely simply because my health was perfect.  It may\nbe said that the sensations afforded by such a life as mine were not\nupon a grand scale.  They were not to be compared with the acute and\npoignant sensations afforded--perhaps I should say inflicted--by a\ncity.  I can only say they were enough for me.  All pleasures are\nrelative, and the simplest pleasure is capable of affording as great\ndelight as the rarest.  The sight of a flower can produce as keen a\npleasure as a Coronation pageant, and the song of a bird may become to\nthe sensitive ear as fine a music as a sonata by Beethoven.  May I not\nalso say that the simplest pleasures are the most enduring, the\ncommonest delights are the most invigorating, the form of happiness\nwhich is the most easily available is the best?  The further we stray\nfrom Nature the harder are we to please, and he knows the truest\npleasure who can find it in the simplest forms.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nHOW WE LIVED\n\nThe most common objection to country life is what is called its\ndulness.  When I used to suggest to my town acquaintances the\nadvantages of a holiday in purely rustic scenes, I was always met by\nthe remark: 'Oh, there would be nothing to do there!'  No doubt if a\nholiday is devoted to lounging, it is much more difficult to lounge at\na solitary farm than at some crowded seaside resort.  But my holidays\nin the country had never been of this description.  I am\nconstitutionally unfitted for a lounger.  I like to have my days\nplanned out, and to live them fully.  A country holiday for me had\nalways meant incessant occupation of one kind or another, fishing,\nclimbing, boating, long cycling excursions, and an industrious\nendeavour to explore all scenes of interest within a reasonable\ncompass.  Now that I had come to live in the country, I felt more than\never the need of incessant occupation, for I fully realised that the\nworst enemy of human happiness is ennui.\n\nDuring the first three months, while I was busy in getting settled,\nthere was no danger of ennui.  I was constantly interested, and I was\nconstantly at work.  I learned how to do carpentering and joiner's jobs\nwith a fair proficiency; I dug nearly an acre of land at the back of my\nhouse with my own spade; made paths, and planted fruit trees; all the\nturf for my lawn I laid myself, with a few hours' assistance from a\nfarm-hand; and there was no night when I did not go to bed with aching\nmuscles and often with bruised hands.  If my bill for labour was\nabsurdly moderate, it was partly because I did so much myself.\n\nFor instance, I employed no one to hang papers or to whitewash ceilings\nor paint woodwork.  With the willing help of my wife and my boys this\nwas done with complete satisfaction.  One result of these labours was\nthe pride and love for our little homestead which they created.  In\nmodern civilised life we get too many things done for us, and this is\nnot merely an economical but an ethical mistake.  It is difficult to\nfeel any real pride in a home which is the creation of other people.\nIn a true state of civilisation no man will pay another to do what he\ncan do himself.  Not only does he preserve his independence by such a\nrule, but he creates a hundred new objects of interest for himself.\nThe paper which I had hung with my own labour gave me a pleasure which\na much finer paper hung by paid labour could not have given me.  The\nlawn which I had laid with my own hands seemed more intimately mine\nthan if I had paid some one else to make it.  The more I reflect upon\nthe matter the more am I convinced that one of the great curses of\ncivilisation is the division of labour which makes us dependent upon\nother people to a degree which destroys individual efficiency.  Thrown\nback upon himself as a dweller in a wilderness, any man of ordinary\ncapacity soon develops efficiency for kinds of work which he would\nnever have attempted in a city, simply because a city tempts him at\nevery point to delegate his own proper toil to others.  I can conceive\nof few things that would do more to create a genuine pride of home than\nto insist that no man should possess a house except by building it for\nhimself, after the old primitive principle of the earliest social\ncommunities.  To build thus is to mix sentiment with the mortar, and\nthe house thus created is a place to which affections and memories\ncling; whereas the mere tenancy of a cube of rotten bricks, thrown\ntogether by the jerry-builder--of which we know no more than the amount\nof rent which is charged for it--is incapable of nourishing any\nsentiment, and is, in any case, not a home but a lodging.\n\nThis idea is no doubt chimerical; for in a vast city, where the great\nobject is to escape starvation, no one has time to interest himself\ndeeply in the kind of house he occupies, and still less has he the\nopportunity to build a house which is the expression of his own taste\nand labour.  But in the country the idea is not only practicable, it is\nurgent.  Independence is made necessary because there are fewer people\non whom we can become dependent.  I soon found that if I wanted\npotatoes and cabbages, I must grow them; if a pipe burst there was no\nplumber to mend it, I must mend it myself; and so through a long range\nof occupations, with which I had had no previous acquaintance.  The\nimmortal Captain Davis, of the _Sea Ranger_, remarks to the incompetent\nlandsman Herrick, whom he has engaged as first mate on the _Farralone_,\n'There ain't nothing _to_ sailoring when you come to look it in the\nface,' and I am inclined to think that the observation is true of other\nthings besides navigation.  There is nothing in ordinary gardening,\ncarpentering, or work about a house that any intelligent man cannot\nlearn in a month by giving his mind to it.  Intelligence, industry, and\na deft hand will take any man of capacity through any of the ordinary\nemployments of life with moderate credit, or at least without disgrace.\nWhen once the right handling of tools is learned, the rest is merely a\nmatter of intelligence.  At all events, I had to learn how to be\nproficient in the handling of many strange tools, because there was no\none within reach to handle them for me.  The experience was salutary\nfor me in every way.  It taught me to be ashamed of that kind of\ninefficiency which in towns is reckoned the hall-mark of gentility.  It\ntaught me the virtue of that independence which makes a man equal to\nhis own needs.  It also saved me from ennui.  I found myself living a\nmuch busier life than I had ever lived.  I had never worked so hard,\nand yet there was not a single part of my work that did not add to my\ndelight.  And I worked for direct results, for things I could see, and\nthings which I might justly claim as my own, since I had created them.\n\nI shall perhaps fall under the suspicion of morbid sensitiveness when I\nconfess that I never took my weekly wage in London without a qualm and\na compunction, for I could never make myself believe that I had really\nearned it.  What had I done?  I had simply performed a few arithmetical\nprocesses which any schoolboy might have done as well.  My labour, such\nas it was, was absorbed instantly in the commercial operations of a\ngreat firm.  I could not trace it, and I had no means of estimating its\nvalue.  The money I took for it seemed therefore to come to me by a\nsort of legerdemain.  That some one thought it worth while to pay me\nwas ostensible proof that my work was really worth something; but so\nlittle able was I to penetrate the processes that resulted in this\njudgment, so vivid was the sense of some ingenious jugglery in the\nwhole business, that I did not know whether I had been cheated or was a\ncheat, in living by a kind of labour that cost me so little.  How\ndifferent was my feeling now!  At the end of an hour's spade-work, I\nsaw something actually done, of which I was the indisputable author.\nWhen I laid down the saw and plane and hammer, and stretched my aching\nback, I saw something growing into shape, which I myself had created.\nThere was no jugglery about this; there was immediate intimate relation\nbetween cause and effect.  And thence I found a kind of joy in my work,\nwhich was new and exquisite to me.  I stood upon my own feet,\nself-possessed, self-respecting, efficient for my own needs, and\nconscious of a definite part in the great rhythm of infinite toil which\nmakes the universe.  It is only when a man works for himself that this\nkind of joy is felt.  So enamoured was I of this new joy, that had it\nbeen possible I would have possessed nothing that was not the direct\nresult of my own labour.  I would have liked to have spun the wool for\nmy own clothes, and have tanned the leather for my own boots.  I would\nhave liked to grow the corn for my own bread, and have killed my own\nmeat, as the savage or the primitive settler does.  In this respect the\nsavage or the primitive settler approaches much nearer the true ideal\nof human life than the civilised man, for the true ideal is that every\nman shall be efficient for his own needs, with as little dependence as\npossible on others.\n\nUnder natural conditions there is enough faculty in a man's ten fingers\nto supply his own needs, and all the avocations needful to life may\nmeet under one hat.  The familiar illustration of the number of men\nrequired to make a pin is typical of that contemptible futility to\nwhich what is called civilisation reduces men by mere dispersal of\nlabour.  Such dispersal develops single faculties, but paralyses men.\nIt is like developing some single part of the human organism, such as a\nfinger-tip, to high sensitiveness, by drawing away the sensitiveness\nfrom all the rest.  To do this reduces life to barrenness; it makes it\nmeagre in energy and pleasure; it makes work a disease.  But in such a\nlife as I now lived, it was not a finger-tip that worked but the whole\nman.  The cabbage I cut for dinner was fashioned from my own substance,\nfor my sweat had nourished it.  The butter I ate was part of my own\nenergy, spent over the churn, come back to me in the freshness and\nfirmness of edible gold.  My bread was baked in a flame kindled at my\nown heart [Transcriber's note: hearth?], and it was the sweeter for it.\nWhen I lay down at night I was quits with Nature.  I had paid so much\nenergy into her bank, and had a right to the dividend of rest she gave\nme.\n\nApart from all other things, the economy of this mode of life will be\nat once perceived.  My expenses sank steadily month by month.  I made a\ngood many mistakes, of course, for there is more than meets the eye in\nremunerative gardening, chicken farming, and bee-keeping, as there is\nin most human occupations which appear delusively simple.  It took me\nsome time to rectify these mistakes, but before a year had passed I\nfound myself raising all my own garden produce, well supplied with eggs\nand poultry for my own table, and able to earn a little by the sale of\nmy superfluous stock.  Some articles, such as coal, were excessively\ndear; but then, as a set-off, I could have all the wood I required for\nnext to nothing, and we burned more wood than coal.  Groceries I\npurchased in wholesale quantities from a Manchester store, so that in\nspite of carriage I paid less for them than I had paid in London, and\nsecured the best quality.  My trout rod served my breakfast table, and\nmy gun brought me many a dinner.  In short, I found that small as was\nthe sum of money which I had earned, yet it was more than enough for my\nneeds.\n\nWinter is, of course, the trying time for a resident in the country.\nAbout the beginning of December the weather broke, and there was a week\nof driving rain.  A fortnight of grey weather followed, and then came\nthree days of heavy snow.  From the moment that the snow ceased winter\nbecame delightful.  No words of mine can describe the glory of these\nwinter days.  It is only of late years that people have discovered that\nSwitzerland is infinitely more beautiful in winter than in summer; some\nday they will discover the same truth about the Lake District.  It\nhappened one day in midwinter that business took me as far as Keswick,\nand I shall never forget the astonishment and delight of that visit.\nSkiddaw was a pure snow mountain, a miniature Mont Blanc; Derwentwater\nwas blue as polished steel, covered with ice so clear that it was\neverywhere transparent; the woods were plumed with snow, and over all\nshone the sun of June, and the keen air tingled in the veins like wine.\nBeside the road the drifts ran high, hollowed by the wind into a\nhundred curves and cavities, and in each the reflected light made a\ntapestry of delicate violet and rose.  Those who imagine that snow is\nonly white--dead, cold white--have never seen the pure new-fallen snow,\nwhen the stricture of the frost begins to bind it; such snow has every\ncolour of the rainbow in it, and where it is beaten fine it is like a\ndust of diamonds.  Under a hard grey sky snow appears dead white; but\nunder such a sun as this it glowed and sparkled with all the glories of\nan ice cave.  And then came the sunset, a sunset to be dreamed of.\nSkiddaw was a pyramid of rosy flame; great saffron seas of light lay\nover the Catbells, the immense shoulders of Borrowdale were purple, and\nthe lake was truly a sea of glass and fire.  Nor was this a singular\nand unmatched day.  For a whole month the pageant of the snow lasted.\nClose to my own door were glories scarcely inferior to those of\nBorrowdale and Derwentwater.  The glen was rich with all the fantastic\narabesque of the frost, the moor was like a frozen sea, and four miles\naway lay Buttermere, ringing from morn to night with the sound of\nskates.  There is no greater error than to suppose winter a drear and\njoyless season in the country.  It has delights of its own unimagined\nby the townsman, to whom winter means burst pipes and slushy streets,\nand snow that is soiled even as it falls.  But among mountains winter\nhas its own incomparable glories, and holds a pageant not inferior to\nsummer's.\n\nBut even in days of rain life had its pleasures.  However bad the\nweather might be there were few days when we could not be abroad for\nsome hours, and none when the mountains had not some peculiar beauty to\nreveal.  At the end of a day of rain there were often splendid\nhalf-hours, just before sunset, when the mountains glowed with richest\ncolour; when through the rift of thinning clouds some vast peak named\nlike a torch, and the mist blew out like purple banners, and the\nwatercourses sparkled like ropes of brilliants hung on the scarred\nrocks, and the air was fresh and fragrant with all the perfume of\nhealth.  Fog we seldom had, and when it came, it rarely lasted beyond\nmidday.  And then there were the warm delights of winter evenings, when\nthe wood fire blazed upon the hearth, and the gale roared against the\nwindows.\n\nI have already remarked that books read in the solitude of the country\nalways make a deeper impression on my mind than books read in the\nuneasy leisure of towns.  I found this doubly true when I came to live\nin the country.  I came to my books with a keener and healthier brain.\nThe great masters of literature resumed their sway over me; Scott,\nShakespeare, Cervantes, long-neglected, took powerful hold upon my\nmind.  It is not to dwellers in the town that great writers ever make\ntheir full appeal.  They are too occupied with the trivial dramas of\nlife among a crowd, too disturbed by the eddy and rush of the life\naround them.  But for the dweller in solitude these great writers erect\na theatre, which is the only theatre he knows.  He is able to attend to\nthe drama presented to him, and to be absorbed by it.  He discusses the\nactors and their doings as though they were real personages.  Effie\nDeans and Varley, Ophelia and Don Quixote, were for us creatures whom\nwe knew.  It was the same with later writers.  Byron's poetry once more\nappealed to me by its revolutionary note, Shelley was interpreted\nafresh to me by these mountains which he would have loved.  One\nincident I recollect which may serve to illustrate this new hold which\nimaginative literature took upon me.  I opened one evening _Great\nExpectations_, and began to read it aloud.  The next morning, at five\no'clock, my two boys were contending for the book.  For a month Pip sat\nbeside our hearth, and Joe Gargery winked at us, and 'that ass'\nPumblechook mouthed his solemn platitudes.  We were continually\nreminding each other never to forget 'them as brought us up by hand.'\nCould any book have laid hold of us after this fashion if it had been\nread in the hurried leisure of a city life?  It was the very absence of\nincident in our quiet lives that made these imaginary incidents\ndelightful.  We lingered over the books we read, extracting from them\nall their charm, all their wisdom, and there was more good talk, more\ndiscriminating criticism heard in my cottage in a month than would be\nheard in a London drawing-room in a year.  And the explanation is\nsimple.  We had no trivialities to talk about; none of those odds and\nends of gossip that do duty for conversation in cities; and thus such\ntalk as we had concerned itself with real thoughts, and the thoughts of\nwise men and great writers.\n\nOne of the principal occupations of my first winter was the education\nof my boys.  After the approved modern fashion I had intrusted this\ntask to others, upon the foolish assumption that what I paid heavily\nfor must needs be of some value.  I discovered my delusion the moment I\ncame to look into the matter for myself.  I found that they knew\nnothing perfectly: certain things they had learned by rote, and could\nrecite with some exactitude, but of the reasons and principles that\nunderlie all real knowledge they knew nothing.  I believe this to be\ncharacteristic of almost all modern education, especially since\ncompetitive examinations have set the pace.  The brain is gorged with\ncrude masses of undigested fact, which it has no power to assimilate.\nFragments of knowledge are lodged in the mind, but the mind is not\ntaught to co-ordinate its knowledge, or, in other words, to think and\nreason.  The yearly examination papers of public schools and\nuniversities afford ample and often amusing illustrations of this\ncondition of things.  I remember an Oxford tutor, who set papers for a\ncertain Theological College, telling me that one year he put this\nquestion: 'Give some account of the life of Mary, the mother of our\nLord.'  This was a question which obviously required some power of\nsynthesis, some exercise of thought and skill in narrative.  One bright\nyouth, after a feeble sentence or two in which the name of Mary was at\nleast included, went on to say, 'At this point it may not be out of\nplace to give a list of the kings of Israel.'  Here was something he\ndid know, and it was something not worth knowing.  I found that my boys\nhad been educated on much the same principle.  They could do a simple\nproblem of mathematics after a fashion; that is, they could recite it;\nbut it had never once been suggested to them as an exercise of reason.\nIt was the same with history; they could recite dates and facts, but\nthey had no perception of principles.  It may be imagined that I had to\ngo to school again myself before I could attempt to instruct them.  I\nhad to take down again my long disused Virgil and Cicero, and work\nthrough many a forgotten passage.  At first the task was distasteful\nenough, but it soon became fascinating.  My love of the classics\nrevived.  I began to read Homer and Thucydides, Tacitus and Lucretius,\nfor my own pleasure.  It was delightful to observe what interest my\nboys took in Virgil, as soon as they discovered that Virgil was not a\nmere task-book, but poetry of the noblest order.  By avoiding all idea\nof mere unintelligent task-work, I soon got them to take a real\ninterest in their work, until at last they came to anticipate the hour\nof these common studies.  I took care also to never make the burden of\nstudy oppressive.  Two hours of real study is as much as a young boy\ncan bear at a time.  He should rise from his task, not with an\nexhausted, but with a fresh and quickened, mind.  On very fine days it\nwas understood that no books should be opened.  Such days were spent in\nfishing, in mountain-climbing, or in long cycling excursions, and the\nstore of health laid up by these days gave new vigour to the mind when\nthe work of education was resumed.\n\nWhen the summer came on, life became a daily lyric of delight.  By five\nin the morning, sometimes by four, we were out fishing.  In the narrow\npart of the glen there was a place where the rocks met in a wild\nminiature gorge, and through them the water poured into a large\ncircular rock-basin, about forty feet in diameter.  This was our\nbathing-pool, and the cool shock and thrill of those exquisitely pure\nand flowing waters runs along my nerves still as I write.  We often\nspent more than an hour there in the early morning, swimming from side\nto side of our natural bath, diving off a rock which rose almost in the\ncentre of the pool, passing to and fro under the cascade, or sitting\nout in the sun, till sheer hunger drove us home to breakfast.  Writers\nwho boast a sort of finical superiority will no doubt disdain these\nbarbarian delights, and wonder that memory should be persistent over\nmere physical sensations.  But I am not sure that these physical\nsensations are not recollected with more acuteness than mental ones,\nand there is no just reason why they should be despised.  I have\nforgotten a good many aesthetic pleasures which at the time gave me\nkeen delight--some phrase in oratory, some movement in concerted music,\nand such like--but I never forget the sensation of wind blowing over my\nbare flesh as I coasted down a long mountain road on a broiling day in\nAugust, nor the poignant thrill of that rushing water in my morning\nbathes.  And mixed with it all is the aromatic scent of the pines\nbeside the stream, the freshness of the meadows, and the song of\nfalling water.  Sometimes, when the river was in summer flood, there\nwas just that spice of danger in our bathing which gave it a memorable\npiquancy.  On such occasions we had to use skill and coolness to avoid\ndisaster; we were tossed about the boiling water like bubbles;\nincredible masses of water flowed over us, warm and strong, in a few\nseconds, and we came out of the roaring pool so beaten and thrashed by\nthe violence of the stream that every nerve quivered.  Breakfast was a\ngreat occasion after these adventures.  Then came a stroll round our\nsmall estate, and an hour or so over books.  Matthew Arnold's _Thyrsis_\nwas a favourite poem with us all on these mornings.  It breathed the\nvery spirit of the life we lived, but for its sadness--this we did not\nfeel.  But we did appreciate its wonderfully exact and beautiful\ninterpretation of Nature, and we had but to look around us to see the\nvery picture Arnold painted when he wrote:\n\n\n  Soon will the high midsummer pomps come on,\n    Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,\n  Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,\n    Sweetwilliam with his homely cottage smell,\n    And stocks in fragrant blow:\n  Roses that down the alley shine afar,\n    And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,\n    And groups under the dreaming garden trees,\n  And the full moon, and the white evening star.\n\n\nSuch was the life we lived.  If we looked back at all to the life we\nhad left, it was with that sort of sick horror which a prisoner may\nfeel who has endured and survived a long term of imprisonment.  It\nseemed to us that we had never really lived before.  The past was a\ndream, and an evil dream.  We had moved in a world of bad enchantment,\nlike phantoms, barely conscious of ourselves.  We had now recovered\nproprietorship in our own lives.  Work, that had been a curse, was a\nblessing.  Life, that had gone on maimed feet, was now virile in every\npart.  This mere fulness of health was in itself ample compensation for\nthe loss of a hundred artificial pleasures which we had once thought\nnecessary to existence.  We knew that we had found a delight in mere\nliving which must remain wholly incredible to the tortured hosts that\ntoil in cities; and we knew also that when at last we came to lie down\nwith kings and conquerors in the house of sleep, we should carry with\nus fairer dreams than they ever knew amid all the tumult of their\ntriumph.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nNEIGHBOURSHIP\n\nThere is a wonderful passage in _Timon of Athens_ which appears to\nexpress in a few strokes, at once broad and subtle, the picture and the\nideal of a perfect city:\n\n\n      Piety and fear,\n  Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,\n  Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,\n  Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,\n  Degrees, observances, customs, and laws.\n\n\nThe congregated life of man, many-coloured, intricate, composed of\nnumerous interwoven interests, was never painted with a higher skill.\nThe word that is most expressive in this description is\n'neighbourhood.'  It strikes the note of cities.  Uttering it, one is\naware of the pleasant music of bustling streets, greetings in the\nmarket-place, whispered converse in the doorways, gay meetings and\nlaughter, lighted squares and crowds, the touch of kind hands, evening\nmeals and festivals, and all the reverberation of man's social voice.\nA man may grow sick for such scenes as a sailor grows sick with longing\nfor the sea.  There were times when this sickness came on me, this\nnostalgia of streets.  It was only by degrees I came to see that\nneighbourhood has a significance apart from cities.\n\nThe first sensation of the man suddenly exiled from cities is a kind of\nbewildering homelessness in Nature.  He is confronted with a\nspaciousness that knows no limit.  He treads among voids.  He\nexperiences an almost unendurable sense of infinity.  He can put a\nbound to nothing that he sees; it is a relief to the eye to come upon a\nwall or a hedge, or any kind of object that implies dimension.  There\nis something awful in the glee or song of birds; it seems irrational\nthat with wings so slight they should dare heights so profound.  All\nsense of proportion seems lost.  After being accustomed for many years\nto think of himself as in some sense a figure of importance in the\nuniverse, a man finds himself unimportant, insignificant, a little\ncreature scarce perceptible a mile away.  I came once upon some human\nbones lying exposed on the side of an old earthwork on the summit of a\nhill; heavy rains had loosened the soil, and there lay these painful\nrelics in the cold eye of day.  Two thousand years ago, or more, spears\nhad clashed upon this hillside, living men had gone to final rest amid\ntheir blood; and it came upon me with a sense of insult how little man\nand all his battles counted for in the limitless arena of the world.\nThe brute violence of winds and tempests had swept these hills for\ncenturies; and he whose lordship of the world is so loudly trumpeted,\nhad lain prone beneath this violence, unremembered even by his fellows.\nI understood in that moment that affecting doctrine of the nothingness\nof man, which coloured mediaeval thought so strangely: like the monk of\nthe cloister I also had before me my _memento mori_.  But in truth I\ndid not need the bones of dead warriors to humble me; the mere space\nand stillness of the world sufficed.  My ear ached for some sound more\nrational than the cry of blind winds, my eye for some narrower stage\nthan this tremendous theatre, where an army might defile unnoticed.  In\nsuch a mood the desire of neighbourship grows keen.  One is cheered\neven by the comradeship of his own shadow.  It becomes necessary to\ntalk aloud merely to gain assurance that one lives.  So ghost-like\nappears man's march across the fields of Time, that some active\nexpression of physical sensation becomes imperative, in order to\nrecover evidence of one's physical existence; and thrice welcome, like\nthe violence offered to the half-drowned, is any kind of buffet which\nbreaks the dream, and sets the nerves tingling in the certainty of\ncontact with men who breathe and live.\n\nThe easy and ostensible remedy for such a state of mind is immediate\nretreat to the reassuring hum of cities: the more difficult but real\nremedy is the reassurance of one's own identity.  Many people take the\nfirst course without admitting it; alleging the lack of intercourse or\nconvenience in country life, whereas the real truth is that contact\nwith the steadfast indifference of Nature has proved wounding to their\negoism.  A vain man cannot maintain his sense of self-importance in the\ncentre of a vast moor, or amid the threatening bulk of giant hills.  He\nlooks upon nothing that respects him.  He can find nothing subservient\nto him.  Therefore he flies to the crowded haunts of men, and the\nporter touching his hat to him for a prospective twopence at the\nrailway station, is the welcome confessor of his disallowed divinity.\nIt is, alas! the most common and humbling feature of human nature that\nwe all stiffen our backs with pride when the knee of some\nfellow-creature is crooked in homage to us, although that homage may be\nbought for twopence!  No wonder that the man in whose character vanity\nis the chief essence cannot long endure contact with Nature; Nature\nrespects no man, and laughs in the face of the strutting egoist.  But\nif a man will live long enough with Nature to become reconciled to her\nimpassivity, he begins to recover self-respect, by recovering the\nconviction of his own identity.  He has that within himself which\nNature has not, the faculty of consciousness.  He is but a trifling\natom in the scheme of things, but he is a thinking atom.  He sees also\nthat all living creatures have an identity of their own.  Each goes\nabout the scheme of life in deliberate wisdom.  Why should he complain\nof insignificance when the bird, the flower, the horse that drags the\nplough, the beaver in the stream, the spider on the wall, make no\ncomplaint; each accomplishing its task as intently as though it were\nthe one task the world wanted done?  In the life of the merest insect\nare toils as great, and vicissitudes as tragic, as in the most heroic\nhuman life, and to see so much is to attach a new dignity to all kinds\nof life.  The bird building its nest is doing precisely the same thing\nas the man who builds his house, and with an equal skill of\narchitecture.  The flower, fighting for its life, is engaged in the\nsame struggle as man, for whom every breath and pulse-beat is a victory\nover forces that threaten his destruction.  The world is full of\nidentities, each unmoved by the tremendous scale of its environment.\nHence a new kind of neighbourship is possible, wider and more catholic\nthan the neighbourship between man and man.  Kinship, not in kindred,\nbut in universal life, becomes possible.  There is no sense of\nloneliness in a country life after that discovery is made.  The\nemptiest field is as populous as the thronged city.  The Academy of\nGod's art opens every spring upon the gemmed hillside.  The building of\na new metropolis as wonderful as London is going on beneath the thatch\nwhere the bees toil.  All that constitutes human magnificence is seen\nto be but a part, and not a large part either, of a yet wider\nmagnificence of effort and achievement; for of the flowers of the field\nwe can say, 'Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of\nthese.'\n\nThe fact is that civilised man moves in a much too narrow range of\naffinities.  He has forgotten the rock from which he was hewn, and the\nhole of the pit from which he was dug.  He has reduced the keyboard of\nhis sympathies by whole octaves.  The habit of shutting up his body\nwithin walls, has produced the corresponding habit of shutting up his\nmind within walls.  Hence Nature, which should be an object of delight\nto him, becomes a cause of terror or repugnance.  Solitude, which is\none of the most agreeable sensations of the natural man, is one of the\nmost painful and alarming sensations of the civilised man.  The\ncivilised man needs to be born again that he may enter the kingdom of\nNature; for to enter either the kingdom of grace or of Nature the same\nprocess is necessary--we must become as little children.  Thoreau has\ndescribed this experience in terms which might apply equally to the\nreligious mystic or the Nature-lover.  He tells us that for a brief\nperiod after he came to live in the woods he felt lonesome, and\n'doubted if the near neighbourhood of man was not essential to a serene\nand healthy life.  To be alone was something unpleasant.  But I was at\nthe same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to\nforesee my recovery.  In the midst of a gentle rain, while those\nthoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and\nbeneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and\nin every sight and sound about my house, an infinite and unaccountable\nfriendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the\nfancied advantages of human neighbourhood insignificant, and I have\nnever thought of them since.  Every little pine-needle expanded and\nswelled with sympathy, and befriended me.  I was so distinctly made\naware of the presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes that\nwe are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of\nblood to me and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that I\nthought no place could ever be strange to me again.'  This experience\nmarked the rebirth of Thoreau, as truly as a new and delightful\nsensitiveness to a spiritual world marked the re-birth of Bunyan.  The\nwhole secret of re-birth lies in the recovery of lost affinities.\n\nI do not recollect any particular crisis such as Thoreau describes, but\nI can trace the process in myself.  I took no pains to cast the slough\nof cities; I registered no vows and consulted no teachers; it seemed\nthat the thing was quietly done for me by the Higher Powers.  I had no\npart in the matter except to be docile.  Nature took me in hand, as\nsleep takes in hand the sick child; the only thing asked of me was my\nsubmission.  The result soon appeared in the altered scale of my\nperceptions.  I became indifferent to newspapers, to the doings and\nperformances of public personages, to the rise and fall of literary\nreputations, and to a great many books which once interested me.  I saw\nthat a considerable number of those whom I had counted public teachers\nwere no better than persons who talked in their sleep.  They knew\nnothing of the elemental life of man, and were unfitted to pronounce\nverdicts upon his destiny.  Novelists particularly offended me by their\ngross ignorance of life.  The pictures of life they drew were as untrue\nas a description of a street-fight would be if written by a perfumed\nodalisque who had never crossed the threshold of a harem.  The ancient\nelemental life of man, spent in storm and sunshine, under wide skies,\nthey had not so much as looked at, and their voluminous chatter about\nman and his doings had as little relation to life as the philosophy\nthat is enunciated in a monkey-house.  Opera-bouffe performed upon\nHelvellyn would be a sorry spectacle; what was all this bedizened rout\nof people playing before the footlights of cities, but a vain burlesque\nat which Nature laughed?  And as my sense of the importance of this\nkind of spectacle gradually sank, my appreciation of the serious drama\nconducted by Nature, upon a stage as old as time, whose footlights are\nthe changeless planets, gradually rose.  I had become the neighbour of\nEternity, through neighbourship with things that are themselves\neternal.  I tasted the pleasure of enlarged existence, which had become\npossible through enlarged affinities.  I had eaten of the Tree of Life,\nwhich grows wherever there is a Garden brought to beauty by the sweat\nof man's brow, and I had the knowledge of good and evil.\n\nOne form of neighbourship which brought me perpetual delight was--if I\nmay so describe it--neighbourship with the stars.  I had hitherto\nscarce given a thought to astronomy, save of the vaguest kind, and all\nI knew of it was derived from the recollection of one or two popular\nlectures.  This was pardonable in a citizen, who is never able to see\nany considerable space of firmament.  But when a man comes to live in\nthe country he can scarce remain indifferent to a pageant so sublime as\nthe midnight heavens.  It is always with him; it obtrudes itself upon\nhim; it becomes in time the scenery of his life.  It pleased me on\nclear evenings before I slept to go out and take what I called a\nstar-bath, a term justified by the real sense I had of waves of soft\nlight and silence flowing over me, submerging and cleansing me, and\nsetting my soul afloat.  But very soon this purely aesthetic pleasure\nbecame also an excitement of the intellect.  An immense curiosity\nseized me.  I desired to penetrate this lighted labyrinth of space, to\nclimb these shining terraces, to know where these vast roads led, in\nwhose profound seclusion God Himself seemed to hide.  In a very humble\nway I began the study of astronomy, and although I never got beyond its\nelements yet my whole life was incalculably enriched by what I learned.\nI sometimes felt that of all my neighbours the stars were the\nfriendliest and wisest.  That sense of insignificance, begotten by the\npressure of immensity upon the spirit, of which so many men have\nwritten, I never felt; my most constant feeling was a kind of gladness\nwhich had its root in the conviction of some living friendly Power\nbehind and in the spectacle.  The sense of insignificance, if it came\nat all, was associated with the vanities of mankind.  It did indeed\nseem a strange thing that a man whose thoughts could walk among the\nstars, should bend those thoughts to a mean eagerness for gold, a pride\nin dress, or the building of palaces, which when achieved are not so\nmuch as a single grain of dust upon an ant-hill.  In a universe, whose\narithmetic employs worlds for the ciphers of its reckoning, bigness as\nassociated with man sounds ridiculous; and the biggest fortune or the\nbiggest grief are alike infinitesimal.  But when the desire of bigness\npasses from a man's mind, humility becomes pleasurable, and immensity\nis soothing.  I forgot to think of the vastness of the stars; they were\nfor me neighbourly and friendly presences, talking like a wise old\nnurse to me of things that happened before my birth, and the ancient\nkindness of Him whom a daring poet calls, 'My old neighbour--God!'\n\nNeighbourship with the earth also became a vital pleasure and a source\nof peace.  There was a time when I had a vivid horror of death; and as\nI look back, and analyse my sensations, I believe this horror was in\nlarge part the work of cities.  It sprang from the constant vision of\ndeformity, the presence of hospitals, newspaper narratives of tragic\naccidents, and the ghastly cheerfulness of metropolitan cemeteries.  To\ndie with a window open to the trampling of a clamorous, unconcerned\nstreet seemed a thing sordid and unendurable.  To be whisked away in a\nplumed hearse to a grave dug out of the debris of a hundred forgotten\ngraves was the climax of insult.  It happened to me once to see a child\nburied in what was called a common grave.  It was a grave which\ncontained already half a dozen little coffins; it was a mere dust-bin\nof mortality, and it seemed so profane a place that no lustration of\nreligion could give it sanctity.  Dissolution met the mind there in\nmore than its native horror; it had the superimposed horror of\nindecency and wilful outrage.  But in the wide wholesome spaces of the\nworld, and beneath the clean stars, death seems not undesirable.  A\ncountry life gives one the pleasant sense of kinship with the earth.\nIt is no longer an offence to know oneself of the earth earthy.  I was\nso much engaged in the love and study of things whose life was brief\nthat the thought of death became natural.  I saw constantly in flowers\nand birds, and domestic creatures, the little round of life completed\nand relinquished without regret.  I saw also how the aged peasant\ngathered up his feet and died, like a tired child falling asleep at the\nclose of a long day.  Death is in reality no more terrible than birth;\nbut it is only the natural man who can so conceive it.  He who lives in\nconstant kinship with the earth will go to his rest on the earth's\nbosom without repugnance.  I knew very well the place where I should be\nburied; it was beneath a clean turf kept sweet by mountain winds; and\nthe place seemed desirable.  Having come back by degrees to a life of\nentire kinship with the earth, having shared the seasons and the\nstorms, it seemed but the final seal set upon this kinship, that I\nshould dissolve quietly into the elements of things, to find perhaps my\nresurrection in the eternally renewed life of Nature.\n\nNeighbourship meant also for me kinship, with every kind of life around\nme, and some friendly association with my fellow-men.  The creatures we\ncall dumb have a sure way of talking to us, if we will overcome their\nshyness and give them a chance.  Moreover their habits, their method of\nlife, their thoughts, are in themselves profoundly interesting.  I\nseemed to have discovered a new universe when I first took to\nbee-culture.  The geometry of the heavens is not more astonishing than\nthe geometry of the beehive, nor is the architecture of the finest city\nbuilt by man more intricate and masterly.  Here, as in all things, we\nare deceived by bulk, counting a thing great merely because it is big;\nbut if it come to deducing an Invisible Mind in the universe from the\nthings that are visible, I would as soon base my argument on what goes\non in a bee's brain, as on the harmonies of law manifested in the solar\nsystem.  I believe we greatly err in underrating other forms of life\nthan our own.  The Hindu, who acknowledges a mystic sacredness in all\nforms of life, comes nearer the truth.  Life for life, judged by\nproportion, plan, symmetry, delicacy of design and beauty of\nadjustment, man is a creature not a whit more wonderful than many forms\nof life which he crushes with a careless foot.  The creature we call\ndumb is not dumb to its mates, and it is very likely our human modes of\ncommunication appear as absurd to the dog or horse as theirs do to us.\nWe know what we think of the so-called dumb creatures; it might be a\nhumbling surprise if we could know what the dumb creature thinks of us.\nThe satire would not be upon one side, be sure of it.\n\nTo the townsman the simple dwellers on the soil seem almost as\nincapable of intercourse as the creatures of the field and pasture.\nBecause they do not know the kind of things the townsman knows, they\nare supposed to know nothing.  I have already said enough to show how\nabsurd and insolent is this assumption.  My neighbours were few, and\nsimple-minded; but they possessed many kinds of skill necessary to\ntheir life, they had wisdom and virtue, and upon the whole a kind of\nfundamental dignity of nature.  They were as shy as woodland creatures\nto a stranger's voice; they were highly sensitive to the mere shadow of\na slight, and both suspicious and resentful of patronage; but they met\ntrust with trust, and where they gave their trust they gave their full\nloyalty of friendship.  In my youth, as I have said elsewhere, I often\npassed a whole day in a forest.  I would choose some solitary glade,\nwhere my intrusion was audibly resented by the unseen creatures of the\nwood, who fled before me; but when an hour had passed, and the signal\nhad run through the forest that I meant no harm, those scattered and\nastonished creatures reassembled.  The whole life of the wood then went\non before my eyes; the birds sang their best for me, the squirrel\nperformed his innocent gymnastics with an eye to my applause, the very\nsnake moved less shyly through the grass, as though the word had gone\nforth that I was a guest, who must be entertained and made to feel at\nhome.  This experience often recurred to me in my early days at\nThornthwaite.  It was some time before I was admitted to the\nfree-masonry of the scanty social life around me; when at last I had\npaid my footing I found that here also was a commonwealth; here also\nmight be found upon a narrow scale, but in authentic forms,\n\n      Piety and fear,\n  Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,\n  Degrees, observances, customs, and laws.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nTHE WOUNDS OF A FRIEND\n\nThose who have been friendly enough to follow me so far in my little\nstory will scarcely push their friendship so far that they will refrain\nfrom criticism upon myself and my doings.  On one point, viz. the\nsocial morality of my conduct, I am so sure of criticism that I will\nanticipate it with self-criticism.  Had I the moral right to desert the\ncity, and to ignore the social obligations of the city, in order to\nfind a life that was more pleasurable to myself?  A city which presents\na depressing variety of social needs can hardly afford to spare any\ngood citizen, however humble, who is capable of social service, and for\nsuch a citizen to contract himself out of his obligations is very like\nskulking.  I confess that this consideration occasioned me some\nuneasiness, and the questions which it raised have been treated with\nsuch admirable lucidity by a friend of mine, who still resides in\nLondon, that I will let him put the case against me.\n\nThe friend of whom I speak belongs to that class which may be roughly\ndescribed as Earnest Good People.  With very small means, and not much\nspare time at his disposal, he is nevertheless constantly engaged in\nwhat is called the work of Social Amelioration.  The problems of city\nsqualor, vice, and ignorance haunt him like a nightmare.  When a very\nyoung man he made a voyage of discovery among the submerged tenth; got\nacquainted with tramps, night strollers, and wastrels on the Thames\nEmbankment; slept in doss-houses and Salvation Army shelters; tried his\nhand on experimental philanthropy among the slums; and was driven\nhalf-frantic by what he saw.  He has the makings of a saint in him; of\na Francis of Assisi, of a Father Damien.  He teaches in night-schools,\nconducts Penny Banks, and is grateful to any one who will introduce him\nto a desperate social enterprise which no one else will attempt.  The\nfirst business of life, he is fond of saying, is not to get good, but\nto do good.  Of pleasure, in the usual sense of the term, he knows\nnothing, and would grudge the expenditure of a sixpence upon himself as\nlong as he knew a cadger or a decayed washerwoman who seemed to have a\nbetter claim to it.  London is for him not a home, but a battlefield,\nand his spirit is the spirit of the soldier who dare not forsake his\npost.\n\nMany years ago, when I was going for my summer holiday, he wrote me a\nreproachful poem, from which I quote a part, because it is the best\nindex to his own character and the most lucid exposition of his own\nattitude to life which I can recall:\n\n\n  The roar of the streets at their loudest\n    Rises and falls like a tune;\n  Midday in the heart of London,\n    Midway in the month of June.\n\n  And blue at the end of a valley\n    I see the ocean gleam,\n  And a voice like falling water\n    Speaks to me thro' a dream.\n\n  It calls, and it bids me follow;\n    Ah, how the worn nerves thrill\n  At the vision of those green pastures\n    And waters running still!\n\n  But I dare not move nor follow,\n    For out of the quivering heat\n  Another vision arises\n    And darkens at my feet--\n\n  White faces worn with the fever\n    That crouches evermore\n  In the court and alley, and seizes\n    The poor man at his door,\n\n  Float up in my dream and call me,\n    And cry, If Christ were here\n  He had not left us to perish\n    In the fever-heat of the year!\n\n  God knows how I yearn for the mountains\n    And the river that runs between!\n  Ah, well, I can wait--and the pastures\n    Of heaven are always green.\n\n\nNo one will question the nobility of sentiment in these simple lines,\nand they are the genuine expression of the man.  In his case, however\nslight may be his claim to be called a poet, that hardest test of the\npoet is fulfilled:--\n\n\n  The gods exact for song\n  To become what we sing.\n\n\nIt will be imagined that a man of this order would view my retreat from\nLondon with disfavour.  He thought me guilty of a kind of social\nperfidy.  No doubt the Earnest Good People, for whom I have the\ngreatest reverence, will agree in the same verdict.  A letter received\nduring the last few days from my friend puts the case with such force,\nand yet with such good-feeling, that I will transcribe a part of it.\n\n'I confess,' he writes, 'that the pleasures of life among the mountains\nleaves me cold.  It is not that I am incapable of the same kind of\npleasure, but, as you know, I have other ideas concerning the uses of\nlife.  I cannot enjoy sunsets while men and women are starving.  The\nthought of all the misery of life for multitudes would, as Rossetti\nputs it, \"make a goblin of the sun.\"  You used to be very eloquent\nagainst good men who lived only for their own pleasure; are not you\nyourself living in the same way?  I have heard you declaim against the\ngross selfishness of Goethe's aim in life--\"to build the pyramid of his\nown intellectual culture\"; are not you, in your own way, pursuing the\nsame ideal?  I have heard you say that nothing so belittled Goethe in\nyour judgment as the fact that he was destitute of patriotism; he dwelt\nat ease among his books, while his country perished and felt no pang;\nand you live your joyous life among the hills, and have forgotten the\nGolgothas on which the poor of London endure their unpitied martyrdom.\nYou are doing good to yourself, no doubt; but is it not a better thing\nto be doing good to others?  I marvel that you can sleep at peace amid\nthe wailing of the world.  I cannot, and I thank God I cannot.\n\n'What you do not seem to realise is that all our acts must be judged\nnot only from the personal, but from the collective standpoint.\nSuppose all men followed your example, what would happen?  Why, cities\nwould soon become the mere refuse-heaps of the unfit.  The drudges\nwould remain, the captains of industry would be gone.  There would be\nno leaven of higher intelligence left, no standard of manners, nothing\nthat could set the rhythm of life.  This is too much the case already.\nThe merchant, the writer, the man of wealth and culture, live as far as\nthey can from the struggling crowd.  You would extend the process, and\nmake it possible for the clerk as well as the merchant.  If your new\ngospel of a return to Nature succeeds, we shall soon see the universal\nexodus of the best intellectual and physical units of the community.\nBut you forget that some millions will remain behind, who cannot flee.\nHave you no obligations to these?\n\n'Besides this, you do not seem to perceive that the ultimate drift of\nthe new gospel is toward anarchy.  The return to nature is practically\na return to barbarism.  You would have all men content so long as they\ngrew enough potatoes for their daily needs.  You would have England\nreturn to the conditions of the Saxon heptarchy.  Each man would squat\nupon his clearing in the forest, ignobly independent, brutally content.\nThere would be no longer that struggle for life which develops\ncapacity, that urging onward of the flood of life which cuts for itself\nnew channels, that passion for betterment which means progress.  You\nsave yourself from the collisions of life; but it is in such collisions\nthat the finest fires are struck out of the heart of humanity.  Again,\nI say, any course of action must be judged by its collective effect\nbefore it can be rightly understood.  It is not the individual that\ncounts, but the race.  A good for the individual is not permissible\nunless it is a good also for the race.  I do not admit that your new\nway of life is an entire good for you, for I believe you must in time\nsuffer from your isolation; but even if I did admit it, I should deny\nyour right to it, if in its large effects it means an ill for the race.\nWould you venture to say that the race would profit by it if your\nexample were largely imitated?  I think you dare not say so much, for\nyou must be aware that the general desertion of cities would mean the\ndecay of commerce and of the arts, the arrest of progress, and national\ndisintegration.  And if your own personal example would bear only evil\nfruit were it elevated to a law of life, it stands condemned.\n\n'For my own part, I am where you left me.  I am in the same\nrooms--dull, stuffy, inconvenient--you know all about them.  I breathe\nquantities of bad air every day, and see a hundred things that distress\nme.  I go three nights a week to the room in Lucraft's Row; struggle\nwith the young barbarians of the slums, and am content if I see but a\nfew signs of order evolving themselves out of chaos.  A week ago I was\nknocked down by a ruffian, who came next day to apologise on the\nthree-fold ground that he was drunk, that he did not know it was me he\nstruck, and that if he had known he never would have done it.  My\nruffian was very penitent.  He has since signed the pledge and is my\nfirm friend.  I chased him out of a public-house last night, and made\nhim come home to my lodgings with me, where I gave him coffee, and sang\nsongs to him.  He followed all my movements with the big wistful eyes\nof a dog.  There were tears in those eyes when he bade me good-night.\nHe brushed them away with a dirty hand, and said, \"I know I can keep\nstraight now, sir, because you are my pal, and I ain't a-going against\nthe wishes of my pal!\"  This morning he left a pineapple at the door\nfor me--he is a coster, and pineapples are cheap just now.  I felt more\npleasure than I can say; I could have sung over my work all day, so\nglad was I.  My dear fellow, don't think I speak pharisaically--you\nknow me too well; but I do believe I got more genuine pleasure out of\nmy experience with this rough fellow than you will ever get out of your\nsunsets.  Lucraft's Row is a dull place enough, but when a ray of light\ndoes shine into it, it brings with it more than common joy.\n\n'My objection to your new mode of life is that it is entirely\nself-centred.  There is no projection of yourself into other lives.\nYou are contributing nothing to the common stock of moral effort.  You\nare simply marooned.  It alters nothing that you have marooned yourself\nunder conditions that please and content you.  I think that if I were\nmarooned upon the fairest island of the Southern Seas, where I had but\nto bask in the sunshine and stretch out my hand to find delightful\nfood, there would be still something in my lot which I should find\nintolerable.  I should spend my days upon the island's loftiest crag,\nwatching for a sail.  The thought of a thousand ships not far away,\nrushing round the globe, with throb of piston, crack of cordage, strain\nof timber, buffeting of waves, and shouting crews, would drive me\ndistracted.  What to me were blue skies and soft winds when I might be\nsharer in this elemental strife?  How should I covet, in all this\nadorable and detested beauty of my solitary isle, the grey skies that\nlooked on human effort, the violent wind, the roaring waves, the\nmuscles cracking at the capstan, the strong exhilaration of peril,\neffort, conflict, and the glory of hourly contiguity with death!  It\nwas so Ulysses felt:\n\n\n  How dull it is to pause, to make an end,\n  To rust unburnished, not to shine in use.\n\n\nIt was so he resolved\n\n\n  To follow knowledge like a sinking star,\n        *      *      *      *      *\n  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.\n\n\nYou will not question that the sentiment is manly.  Is there not then\nsomething that is unmanly in the opposite sentiment?  Or, to be plain,\nmy friend, is it not lack of courage which has driven you from us, lack\nof heroic temper, lack of that divine and primitive instinct which\ntakes a \"frolic welcome\" in the \"thunder and the sunshine,\" in the\nconflict and the stress of life?\n\n'I believe that we are bound to be the losers by any wilful separation\nfrom our kind.  This was the case with the mediaeval monks and\nascetics; they lost far more than they gained from their separation\nfrom the common life of the people.  It is the same still with very\nrich folk who are able to evade the harsh conscription of life; in\nevading the conscription of life they invariably deteriorate in\nphysical and mental fibre.  I can conceive nothing more ruinous to a\nyoung man than that he should have just enough money to make the toil\nfor bread unnecessary.  More lives have been spoiled by competence than\nby poverty; indeed, I doubt whether poverty has any effect at all upon\na strong character, except as a stimulus to exertion.  Life being what\nit is, we should take it as we find it: we gain nothing by going out of\nour way to find an easier path.  The beaten road is safest.  The man\nwho boldly says, \"Let me know the fulness of life; let me taste all\nthat it has to present of vicissitude, joy, sorrow, labour, struggle;\nlet me know all that common people endure, and endure with them; let me\nbe no exception to the common rule, enjoy no special privilege, ask for\nno immunity from things harsh and disagreeable\"--the man who thinks and\nacts thus is the man who gets the best and most out of life.  But you,\nmy friend, have simply copied the old monks in the arrangement of your\nlife.  There is nothing novel in your action, though just now your\negoism is gratified by the sense of novelty and originality.  You have\nsimply gone out of the world to escape the evil of the world.  You have\nbought yourself out of the conscription of life.  You have yet to\nanswer me one question: are you the better for it?  That question\ncannot be answered in a day.  Ten years hence you will be able to tell\nme something about it, and I shall be much surprised if you do not then\nreport more of loss than gain.  No man ever yet held aloof from his\nkind without paying the price in narrower sympathies, a narrower brain,\nand a narrower heart.  The eternal spirit of Progress which works\nthroughout the universe never fails to punish the deserter, and the\nmost common punishment is atrophy.  Not to submit to the process of\nevolution is to fall down the long slope of degeneracy.\n\n'You do not need to be told that the entire history of nations confirms\nthis rule.  The greatest nations are those which have found life most\ndifficult, and they have thriven on their difficulties.  The soft\nclimate, which reduces toil to a minimum, invariably means the\nenervated race.  Under the harsh skies of Britain a great race has been\ntrained to great exploits; but what part have the islands of the South\nPacific ever played in human history?  Give man a difficulty to\novercome, and he at once puts forth his strength; difficulty is his\nspiritual gymnasium.  Impose on him no need of exertion, and he will\nrot out, just as the races of the South Pacific are rotting out.  I\nwould measure the future of a man, or of a nation, by this simple test;\ndo they habitually choose the easier or the harder path for themselves?\nThe nation that chooses the hard path, that is not afraid of the burden\nof empire, that glories in the strife for primacy and is not afraid to\npay the price of primacy in incredible exertion, in blood and\nsacrifice, is the nation that shall possess the earth.  And is it not\nso with men?  Here, again, I press home the need for considering one's\nactions in their collective aspect.  Your course of life is easily\nimitable: would you have it imitated?  There are thousands of men in\nLondon who could readily retire into a peaceful life to-morrow, on\nterms more favourable than yours.  Every man possessed of a hundred\npounds a year could do it.  Yet there are plenty of old men, with ample\nfortunes, who never dream of doing it.  They stick to their posts and\nthey die at them.  And it is by such men that the great machinery of\nsocial life, of commerce, of national progress is kept going.\n\n'You would say, perhaps, that they are simply sacrificing the finer\npleasures of life to the fanaticism of work; ah, but they are also\nsacrificing them for the good of the community.  If the great surgeon\nor physician bolted from his duties the moment he had acquired money\nenough to buy a cottage, you would say he had no right to rob mankind\nof his skill and service to please himself.  Have you that right?  And\nif the whole nation acted in this spirit, how long would the nation\nhold its place of power and influence?  In less than a century we\nshould be as the Hottentots.  We should be driven out before the\nadvance of more energetic races, just as the Hottentots; who once\npossessed Southern Europe and Egypt, have been forced back into the\nAfrican wilderness, where they live a life that is content with the\ngratification of the most primitive, the most bestial, wants.  It is no\nexcuse to say that the action of one man can have but little influence\nupon the trend of life in a whole nation.  The merest unit in the sum,\nthe cipher even, has power to change the total.  The strength of wisdom\nin the majority of a nation may be more than sufficient to-day to\ncounteract the folly of the unit; but there is always the chance that\nthe folly of the individual may in time prevail against the experience\nof the wise, and pervert the nation.  At all events, we ought to\nconsider such possibilities before we hold ourselves free to do as we\nplease in contempt of general custom.\n\n'Do not be angry with me when I say that to me your flight from London\nappears only an illustration of that cowardice about life which is so\ncommon to-day.  Men are very much afraid of life to-day; afraid of its\nresponsibilities and duties; afraid of marriage and the burden of\nchildren; and not alone for the old are there fears in the way, but\neven the young men faint and grow weary.\n\n'I can understand Stevenson flying to the South Seas; it was part of\nhis prolonged duel with death.  But his heart was in the Highlands, and\ncould he have chosen, his feet would have trodden to old age the grey\nstreets of Edinburgh.  Your flight is altogether different.  You have\nno real excuse in ill-health.  You have simply fallen sick with a\ndistaste for cities.  You have had a bad dream, and you are frightened.\nI love you still; I count you friend still; but I cannot call you brave.\n\n'O my friend, if I have said anything that sounds unfriendly, do not\nbelieve it of me; do not doubt that I love you.  I think I should not\nhave written thus but that in your last letter you expressed pity for\nme, and that stung me, I confess.  And so I retort, you see, by pitying\nyou, which is not admirable in me.  Therefore let me say, if you care\nstill to please me, do not, in any further letters you may write, ever\nexpress the least pity for me.  Quite honestly I say I do not need\npity, for I am perfectly happy.  In giving all the time and money I can\nspare to the poor in Lucraft's Row, I have really renounced nothing;\nor, if I have, I am so unconscious of sacrifice that I can only say\nwith Browning:\n\n\n  Renounce joy for thy fellow's sake?\n  That's joy beyond joy!\n\n\nThere are half a dozen ragged boys who love me: there are twenty more\nwho will do so in time; and there is my drunken friend with the dog's\neyes, who looks to me to save him from the pit; what more can I ask?\nFog and mire, grime and drudgery, these never trouble me, because I see\nLucraft's Row, lit with a star, waiting for me at the end of every day.\nAnd the star is growing bigger and brighter, for it shines over a tiny\nobscure Bethlehem where the Soul is getting itself born in a few humble\nhearts.  To be permitted to see this miracle, to assist in this\nincarnation of the Soul of the People, is its own exceeding great\nreward; and I may be envied, but never pitied.'\n\nSo ran the letter of my friend, and as I transcribe it I feel anew that\nit is an indictment not to be easily set aside.  I must think over what\nI can reply to it.  It seems as though if he be right in his mode of\nlife I must be wrong in mine; and yet may we not both be right?  Are we\nnot seeing life from different angles?\n\nYes, I must have time for thought before I can reply to such a letter.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nAM I RIGHT?\n\nI have given myself a week to think over the letter of my friend, and I\nam now able to perceive that it is built upon a number of most\ningenious fallacies.  The chief fallacy appears to be this--that he\ninsists that the race must always count for more than the individual,\nand that the individual must fall in line and step with the average\nconventions of the race at the expense of his own well-being, or be\njudged a deserter and a recreant.\n\nIt is hardly necessary to point out that no doctrine could be more\nhostile to collective progress, because progress is not a collective\nmovement, but the movement of great individuals who drag the race after\nthem.  I do not recollect a single human reform that has been\nspontaneously generated in the heart of society itself; it has always\nhad its beginnings in the hearts of individuals.  Thus the Reformation\nis practically Martin Luther, the Evangelical revival is Wesley, the\nOxford Movement is Newman, Free Trade is Cobden, and so on through a\nhundred regenerations of thought, morals, and politics.  'The world\nbeing what it is, we must take it as we find it,' is a note of quiet\ndesperation.  It is precisely because the Providence of History has\nagain and again raised up men who were incapable of taking the world as\nthey found it, that regenerations and reformations of society have\noccurred at all.  Society never moves forward except when it is goaded\nby the spirit of individual genius.  So far as we can trace the history\nof civilisation, and thanks to modern research we have about ten\nthousand years to go by, civilisation is a succession of waves, each\nflowing a little higher than its predecessor, with an ebb between each.\nAt what point is the ebb checked, at what point does the fuller wave\nbegin to flow?  Always with the advent of individual genius.  A great\nman rises who founds a dynasty; a great thinker, who publishes new\ntruths; a great lawgiver or statesman, who establishes a new social\nsystem.  New worlds need a Columbus, and the social Columbus is always\na man with sufficient daring to stand by original convictions.\nTherefore I say that human progress is only made possible by not taking\nthe world as we find it; and that he is the best friend of collective\nprogress who is the most obedient not to collective convention, but to\nindividual insight.\n\nI observe that my friend does not live in the spirit of his own axiom:\nelse, why should he trouble himself over the inhabitants of Lucraft's\nRow?  He is certainly not taking the world as he finds it when he\ndevotes his hours of leisure to impart the elements of decency to\ngutter-snipes, and save drunkards from the pit.  He is as much an\nindividualist as I, only his individualism expresses itself in a\ndifferent way; which confirms my original conjecture that we may be\nequally right in our own mode of life.  Nor, by his own confession,\ndoes he really sacrifice his inclinations in his mode of life; he\ngratifies his sense of altruism in Lucraft's Row, and I my love of\nNature in the solitude of lonely hills.  The objects which give men\npleasure may be so diverse that what is a source of joy to one man may\nbe an equal source of misery to another.  There can be no doubt that\nmany of the martyrs and ascetics were honestly enamoured of pain and\nwhatever credit they deserve for sacrifice, they pleased themselves by\nrenouncing the world, as others by enjoying it; and all that can be\nsaid on the subject is that each pleased himself in his own way.\n\nThoreau's defence when he was accused of not doing good was that it did\nnot agree with his constitution; and although the defence sounds like a\npiece of amusing cynicism, it was in reality a plea entirely just.  The\ncommon fault of the Good Earnest People, as of most people, is that\nthey can only conceive of doing good after a pattern which is congenial\nto themselves.  But their mode of doing good, while it suits themselves\nadmirably, may not suit every constitution, and people of a quite\ndifferent mental constitution may be quite as good as themselves,\nalthough it is after a very different pattern.  Thoreau did a vast\namount of good by showing men, in his own example, that the simplest\nkind of life was compatible with the highest intellectual aims; would\nhe, in the long-run, have served the world half as well had he forced\nhimself to live amid the squalor of a New York slum?  Are not we so\nmuch the wiser and stronger by the lessons taught in the hut beside\nWalden Pond, that it would be the poorest compensation for their loss\nto know that Thoreau by dint of effort made himself a fairly efficient\ncity missionary, or pleased the pundits of a Charity Organisation\nSociety?  Or to take a yet more forcible example of my meaning: Hood\nwrote _The Song of the Shirt_, and Wordsworth _The Ode on Intimations\nof Immortality_; would either have gained by an exchange of lot?  The\none poem could only have been written by a man who knew 'the tragic\nheart of towns,' and the other by the man who knew the tranquil heart\nof Nature; but Hood, transported to Grasmere, would have written\nnothing, and Wordsworth in Fleet Street is unthinkable.  As it was,\nDestiny took the matter in hand, and having men to work upon whose\nfirst principle of life was to fulfil and not to violate the instincts\nof their own nature, succeeded in producing two poets who served\nmankind each in a way not possible to the other.\n\nI suspect there is a great deal of cant to be cleared out of the mind\nbefore we can become equitable judges of what doing good really means.\nI define doing good as the fulfilment of our best instincts and\nfaculties for the best use of mankind; but I do not expect that the\nGood Earnest People will accept this definition.  They would find it\nmuch too catholic, simply because they have learned to attach a\nspecialised meaning to the phrase 'doing good,' which limits it to some\nform of active philanthropy.  If they would but allow a wider vision of\nlife to pass before the eye, they would see that there are many ways of\ndoing good besides those which satisfy their own ideals.  It is a\nsingular thing that men find it very difficult to live lives of charity\nwithout cherishing uncharitable tempers towards those who do not live\nprecisely as they themselves do.  For instance, the busy\nphilanthropist, nobly eager to bring a little happiness into the grey\nlives of the disinherited, often has the poorest opinion of artists and\nnovelists, who appear to him to live useless lives.  But when Turner\npaints a picture like the _Fighting Temeraire Towed to Her Last Berth_,\nwhich is destined to stir generous thoughts in multitudes of hearts\nlong after his death: or when Scott writes novels which have increased\nthe sum of human happiness for a century, is not each doing good of the\nrarest, highest, and most enduring kind?  The fulfilment of one's best\ninstincts and faculties, for the best use of mankind, is not only the\ncompletest, but also the only available form of philanthropy.  Since\nNature has chosen to endow us with diverse faculties, our service of\nmankind must be diverse too.  In a word, doing good is a much larger\nbusiness than the ordinary philanthropist imagines; it has many\nbranches and a thousand forms; and they are not always doing the most\nwho seem the busiest, nor do those accomplish most in the alleviation\nof human misery whose contact with it is the closest.\n\nDuring the last year of my life in London I came into contact with a\nbrilliant young Oxford man, who had manifest talents for oratory,\nleadership, and literature.  He was in search of a career, and being a\nyouth of quick sympathies and very generous instincts, he was soon\ncaught in the tide of a certain social movement, whose chief aim was to\ninduce persons of culture to live among the very poorest of the poor.\nThe leader of this movement was a man of beautifully unselfish temper,\nbut of no striking intellectual gifts; apart from a certain originality\nof character, which was the fruit of this unselfish temper, he was\nquite commonplace in mind, and could have aspired to no higher rank in\nlife than an honourable place among the inferior clergy.  He attracted\nthis brilliant youth, however; a youth who had been president of the\nOxford Union, and had taken a double first in classics, for whom\ndistinction in life seemed inevitable.  The end was that his convert\njoined what was really a lay order of social and religious service.  He\nlived among the slums of Holborn, devoted himself to the instruction of\nthe children of the gutter, kept the accounts of coal and blanket\nclubs, and accepted cheerfully all the drudgery of philanthropy among\nthe poor.  Most people, I am quite aware, will say that this is a very\nnoble example of renunciation; so it is, and as such I can admire it.\nBut is there nothing else to be considered?  May not the sociologist\nask whether a man is serving society in the best way by refusing to use\nhis best gifts in the only direction in which they could have full\nplay?  For many years this youth had trained himself for a particular\npart in life which few could fill; he might have influenced the\ncouncils of his nation by his powers of debate, the mind of his nation\nby his gift of literature; he should have stood before kings and spoken\nto scholars; yet all these high utilities were extinguished in order\nthat he might do something which a man with only a tenth part of his\ngifts might have done quite as well.  Think of the picture; a scholar\nwho never opens a book, an orator who addresses only costers and\nwork-girls, a writer who writes nothing, a leader of men who exerts no\npublic influence; and what is this wilful destruction of high faculties\nbut social waste and robbery?  No doubt he is doing good; but would not\nthe good he might have done have been far wider, had he followed the\nline of his natural gifts, and occupied the place in life for which\nthose gifts obviously fitted him?\n\nThis story is a pertinent example of the cant of Doing Good.  By all\nmeans let those live among the poor and work for their betterment who\nhave a distinct vocation for the task; but it is not a vocation for\nall.  I object to the spectacle of a late president of the Oxford Union\ngiving up his life to the management of coal and blanket clubs, just as\nI object to the spectacle of a thorough-bred racehorse harnessed to a\ndray.  It is a waste of power.  But the Good Earnest People never see\nthis side of things, because they are afflicted with narrowness of\nvision.  They admit no definition of doing good but their own.  They\ncannot see that the man who passes from a distinguished University\ncareer to a distinguished public life may do more for the poor by his\npen, by his power of awakening sympathy, by the opportunity that may be\nhis to obtain the reversal of unjust laws or the establishment of good\nlaws, than he ever could have done by living in a slum as the friend\nand helper of a small group of needy men and women.  Decisive victories\nare won more often by lateral movements than by frontal attacks.  The\nwave of force which travels on a circle may arrive with more thrilling\nimpact on a point of contact than that which travels on a horizontal\nline.  Society is best served after all by the fullest development of\nour best faculties; and whether we check this development from pious or\nselfish motives, the result is still the same; we have robbed society\nof its profit by us, which is the worst kind of evil which we can\ninflict on the community.\n\nIf this statement of social obligation is admitted as correct, most of\nmy friend's strictures on my conduct dissolve into mere harmless\nrhetoric.  For instance, he says I have 'marooned' myself, and goes on\nto draw a fancy picture of a South Sea Islander, content with laziness\nand sunshine, intimating that this is the kind of life which I have\nchosen.  On the contrary my life is what most city men would call a\nhard life.  I work hard every day, the only difference between my work\nand theirs being that my work is natural, wholesome, and pleasant,\nwhile theirs is drudgery.  In what am I more selfish than the average\ncitizen, who after all is doing just what I am doing, viz. working for\nhis living?  My friend would have me believe that the man who toils in\ncities does so from exalted motives.  He is bearing the weight of\nempire, assisting in the growth of British commerce, and generally\nserving the cause of national progress, while I sit in ignoble\nindependence on my own potato patch.  I have known a good many men\nengaged in the lower ranks of commerce, but I have yet to meet one who\nis influenced in the least by these highly-coloured motives and ideals.\nThey are intent on earning their living, no more.  Their interest in\ncommerce is precisely confined to what they can get out of it.  They\nbear just as little of the burden of the Empire as the tax-gatherer\nwill permit them.  There is not one of them who would not object with\nvigour to take a single shilling less per week for the sake of\nprogress, or any cause that might arrogate that title.  Besides, it is\nsurely a piece of undiluted Cockney egoism to suppose that the only\npersons who do their duty by the Empire are Londoners.  We are still an\nagricultural country, and there are some millions of people who live\nupon the land.  They do some kind of work, which one may suppose is of\nsome utility and value to the nation; why should their kind of work be\ndespised?  They also pay taxes, give an equivalent of labour for their\nkeep, rear children, educate them, and send them out to be of some\nservice to the State; what does the dweller in cities do more than\nthese?  If I were disposed to argue the question, I should contend that\nthe man who gets a bushel of corn or a sack of good potatoes out of the\nland has added a more real asset to the wealth of the community, and\ntherefore deserves more praise from the commonwealth, than all the\ntribe of stockbrokers since the world began; for these lords of wealth,\nwho reign supreme in cities, produce nothing.  But since my friend is\nfond of quoting Browning, I also will quote him, and let the poet say\nin the flash of three lines what the dialectician would need a page to\nsay:\n\n\n  All service ranks the same with God,--\n  God's puppets, best and worst,\n  Are we: there is no last nor first,\n\n\nOf course there is no disputing the general truth of the statement that\nnations are developed by the call made upon their energies by\ndifficulty, and their power of response to that call.  But why should\nsuch a statement be construed into a reproach on my mode of life?  If\nmy friend, who is probably sitting in a comfortable office at this\nmoment, adding up figures which he could do almost with his eyes shut,\nwould condescend to visit my potato patch, he would find call enough\nupon his energy.  I have almost broken my back, and certainly blistered\nmy hands, for the last four hours in hoeing my potato trenches into\ngood level lines, and I have still an hour's work at weeding to do\nbefore I can satisfy myself that I have earned my dinner.  I can assure\nhim that bread-fruit does not grow on my land, nor am I in danger of\nbeing corrupted by a too easy means of subsistence.  The worst crime\nthat can be alleged against me is that I have changed my occupation in\nlife, but I am very far from being unoccupied.  The occupation which I\nnow follow is the most ancient and most honourable in the world; I\nbelieve that Adam followed it.  Is it not a curious irony upon\ncivilisation, that it has so filled the mind with artificial estimates\nof work, that a form of work which is still practised by the great\nmajority of the world's inhabitants is scarcely regarded as work at all\nby the insolent minority of mankind who happen to live in cities?  But\nI have long observed that there is a universal tendency in men only to\nregard as work the peculiar sort of work which they themselves do; and\nso the artisan supposes he is the only genuine 'working man,' and the\nshopkeeper thinks the life of the professional man a piece of organised\nidleness, and the tradition appears ineradicable that all the clergy,\nfrom bishops downwards, never work at all because they do not sit in\noffices.  It is of a piece with the theory of 'doing good'; for all men\nare bigots when they attempt to measure the universal life of men by\ntheir own little egoistic standards.\n\nAs to that imposing axiom, that all our actions must be measured by\ntheir collective effects, I heartily agree to it, because it is\nprecisely here that I think my case is strongest.  I do not, of course,\ninvite all men to follow my example by returning to what my friend\ncalls 'barbarism,' and there is so little danger of any such\ncatastrophe that it is not worth while discussing it.  But if any\nconsiderable number of men should think my example good, I would not\ndeter them from following it, because I believe that no greater service\ncould be done to society than to multiply the number of individuals who\nprefer a simple to an artificial existence, who are willing to live\nlives of honest labour and entire contentment, who will care not at all\nfor riches, but will spend their utmost care upon their virtues, who\nwill count 'self-possession,' the best of all possessions, and the\npower of living in God's world in cheerful happiness and modest\nusefulness the real programme of life which God has set before all His\nchildren, and which alone is worth our hope and struggle.  The basis of\nall good citizenship is physical and moral health.  Health is really\nwholeness, and so we get the word holiness, for all these words are\nproducts of the same idea.  What service to the race can be greater,\nboth in its present value and its ultimate effect, than to produce men\nand women both physically and morally whole?  It is no doubt a duty to\ndo all we can to help the unfit, and assist the infirm; but it is\nbetter wisdom and a truer duty to produce the fit and the whole.  In\nthe degree that I am better equipped as a man, I am better equipped as\na member of the commonwealth.  All questions of _doing_ good are\nsecondary to the question of _being_ good; and to be good is but a\nsynonym of moral wholeness.  If a nation can succeed in producing\nefficient human creatures, efficient first of all in body, because that\nis the basis of all efficiency of mind, and will, and energy, there\nwill be no question of efficient citizenship.  As for me, I have found\nthe means of a more efficient manhood by a return to a simple and a\nnatural life; and therefore I am quite willing to submit my action to\nthe test of collective example, believing that the more widely it is\nimitated, the better will it be for the happiness and well-being of my\nnation, and of the world.\n\nThe best way of doing good that I can devise is to make myself an\nefficient member of society; and it is obvious that if every man did\nthis there would be very little work for the professional\nphilanthropist.  It is not help that men need most, but opportunity.\nPhilanthropy is, for the most part, engaged in patching up the sick\nanaemic body of society; which is equivalent to minimising the distress\nof ill-health without producing good health.  The wise physician knows\nvery well that no amount of medicine will do much for the anaemic\nchild; what the child wants is room to grow.  We have social physicians\nin plenty, each with his own particular medicine, but all of them\ntogether have said nothing half so wise as these two lines of Walt\nWhitman:\n\n\n  Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons;\n  It is to grow in the open air, and to eat and sleep with the earth.\n\n\nTo create the best persons is to accomplish a service for society which\nis durable, and therefore is the only real good.  I claim that this is\nwhat I have tried to do in my own case, and in no other way could I\ndischarge my obligation to society so well.  Economically considered I\nam now a profitable asset to society.  I do a man's work every day, and\nI earn my keep.  When the time comes for my children to go out into\nlife they will take with them good thews and muscles, sound bodies, and\nwell-furnished minds.  I imagine that this is about as good a\ncontribution to the cause of Progress, the service of Commerce, and the\nmaintenance of Empire, as any one man can make.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nTHE CITY OF THE FUTURE\n\nAfter four years' experiment in Quest of the Simple Life I am in a\nposition to state certain conclusions, which are sufficiently\nauthoritative with me to suggest that they may have some weight with my\nreaders.  These conclusions I will briefly recapitulate.\n\nThe chief discovery which I have made is that man may lead a perfectly\nhonourable, sufficing, and even joyous existence upon a very small\nincome.  Money plays a part in human existence much less important than\nwe suppose.  The best boon that money can bestow upon us is\nindependence.  How much money do we need to secure independence?  That\nmust depend on the nature of our wants.  Becky Sharp thought that\nvirtue might be possible on 5000 pounds a year; and, apart from the\nquestion of whether money has anything to do with virtue at all, it is\nobvious that she put her figure absurdly high.  Most of us put the\nfigure at which independence may be purchased too high.  If our idea of\nindependence is the possession of an income that allows extravagance,\nif life would be intolerable to us without the gratification of many\nartificial wants, if our notion of a lodge in the wilderness is the\n\n\n        Cottage, with a double coach-house,\n  The pride that apes humility,\n\n\nat which Coleridge sneered, then only a very few of us can ever hope\nfor our emancipation.  The first step toward independence is the\nlimitation of our wants.  We must be fed, clothed, and lodged in such a\nway that a self-respecting life is possible to us; when we have\nascertained the figure at which this ideal can be realised, we have\nascertained the price of independence.\n\nMy experiment I regard as successful, but there are two features in it\nwhich diminish its general application.  One is that I took with me\ninto my solitude certain tastes and aptitudes, which I may claim\nwithout the least egoism to be not altogether common.  I had an intense\nlove of Nature, a delight in physical exertion, and a vital interest in\nliterature.  I was thus provided with resources in myself.  It would be\nthe height of folly for a person wholly destitute of these aptitudes to\nventure upon such a life as mine.  He would find the country\nunutterably wearisome, its pursuits a detestable form of drudgery, and\nthe unoccupied hours of his life tedious beyond expression.\n\nIn reconsidering what I have written I perceive that unconsciously I\nhave chronicled only the pleasant episodes of my existence.  There is\nanother picture that might be painted of mountains clothed in cloud,\nroads deep in mire, work done under drenching rains, early darkness,\nlack of neighbourship, isolation and monotony, a life separated by\ncontinents of silence from all the eager movement of the world.  There\nare two pictures of the country, equally true; the country of Corot,\nidyllic, lovely, full of soft light and graceful form; the country of\nMillet, austere, harsh, bleak, impressive only by a certain gravity and\ngrand severity.  We all imagine that we could live in, and we all\ndesire, the country of Corot.  But could we live in the country of\nMillet?  I confess that I could not have done so without resources in\nmyself.  It required a genuine pleasure in hard physical exercise to\nget through the duties of the day, and a genuine interest in literature\nto supply the place of those artificial forms of pleasure which relieve\nthe tedium of towns.  I do not know what I should have done without\nbooks in the long winter evenings.  Nowhere is a 'city of the mind,'\ninto which one can retire, so necessary as in the country.  There is\nalso needed an enduring and genuine delight in Nature and outdoor\noccupations, which creates its own sunshine under dreary skies.  The\nmere sentiment of rusticity, created in the townsman's mind by pictures\nand novels, soon dissolves before the realities of a genuine country\nlife.  It is Millet, not Corot, who is the most frequent comrade of the\nman who looks for months together on the same expanse of fields, and\nmoves upon the same unchanging round of labour.  Therefore it is\nnecessary to insist that no error could be greater than for a man with\nno real aptitude for a solitary life, and no resources of intellectual\npleasure in himself, to attempt such an experiment as mine.  He would\nweary of it in a month, and would flee, like a child afraid of the\ndarkness, back to gaslit streets again, with reviling on his lips and\nbitter anger in his heart.\n\nIt must also be remembered that I did not go into the country with the\nintention of deriving my livelihood from the soil.  My sources of\nincome were separate from my mode of life; and although my income was\nat the best very small, yet it was sufficient to secure me ease of\nmind.  I did indeed discover that the expenses of a simple life were\nslight, and that these expenses might be kept low by a moderate degree\nof industry in rural pursuits, but I never imagined that I could live\naltogether by the soil.  I may frankly confess that while I believe it\nto be perfectly possible for a strong and handy man, accustomed to\nagricultural pursuits, to earn a living from the soil, my example has\nlittle to teach in this direction.  The cry of 'Back to the Land' will\nbe meaningless until general ownership in the land is made possible.\nIt is the burden of rent, often a cruel and unjust rent, that has\ndriven men from the land.  Not far from me at Thornthwaite there\nresided a man and his wife who were among the most frugal and\nindustrious persons I have ever met, yet they found it absolutely\nimpossible to earn a living from the land simply because the conditions\nof their tenure were unreasonable.  For thirteen acres of land, with a\nsmall farm-house and farm-buildings, they paid eighty pounds per annum,\nwith an additional charge of thirty shillings a year for the right of a\nboat upon the lake.  The most that they could do with this small\nholding was to graze four cows, and in a good season they got nearly\nenough hay to feed their cattle during the winter months; but with all\nthe pinching in the world they went steadily behind at the rate of\nabout forty pounds per annum.  This is a concrete example of the\ndifficulties of the small farmer, and it is sufficient to show how vain\nis the hope of any return to the land as long as rents are maintained\nat their present level.  Were it possible for an English government to\noffer free grants of land as the Canadian government does, or even to\nfix rents and provide for the purchase of land as is the case in\nIreland, multitudes of able-bodied men, wearied with the fierce\nstruggle for bread in cities, would avail themselves of the\nopportunity; but under the present conditions of farm-tenure those who\nknow the country best, know that, except in a very few districts, it is\nnext to impossible to live by the land.\n\nIn these important respects, I admit that little can be deduced from my\nexample.  All that I can pretend to teach is that any man possessed of\na small but secure income can live with ease and comfort in the\ncountry, where he would be condemned to a bitter struggle in a city;\nthat a country life presents incomparable advantages of health and\nhappiness; that it is not dull or monotonous to the man who has a\ngenuine love of Nature, and some intellectual resources in himself; and\nthat what are called the privations of such a life are inconsiderable\ncompared with the real injuries endured by the man of small income, who\nearns his difficult bread in the fierce struggle of a city or a\nmanufacturing town.\n\nThis leads me to a final question, viz. can nothing be done to\nregenerate our cities?  Is it quite impossible that the City of the\nFuture should be so contrived as to offer the best advantages of\ncorporate and communal existence without those intolerable\ndisadvantages which at present make the city a realm of 'dreadful\nnight' to the poor, the weak, and the sensitive?\n\nI began by saying that I am not a hater of cities.  I feel their\nfascination, and four years of country life have not destroyed that\nfascination.  When I had occasion recently to return to London for a\nweek's visit, I was surprised to find with what eager joy I plunged\ninto the labyrinth of lighted streets, how the blood began to quicken\nwith the movement of the ceaseless crowd, how much of grandeur and\nbeauty assailed the eye in the wide perspective of domes and towers and\nspires, how the very voice of London, sonorous and confused, like the\nnoise of a great battlefield, thrilled the spirit, and I felt again\nthat old and poignant charm of cities, that quickening of the\nimagination which lies in mere multitude, that perpetual seduction of\nthe senses begotten by the revelation of so much effort and\nmagnificence.  There was an indescribable vivacity in this moving\ncrowd, a contagious animation in the air; and, if truth be told, I\nfound the air fresher and the sky less grey than I had fancied, for a\nsouth-west wind, soft as velvet and wet with sea-salt, blew through\nstreet and square, and the sky was full of sunshine and of racing\nclouds.  I could not wonder at the love of cities; it seemed a passion\ninherent in modern man, fed and brought to its maturity by centuries of\ncommunal existence.  And so the thought grew, that the temper of\nenduring antagonism to cities was a temper more and more impossible to\nmodern man, who has long since left behind the realities of elemental\nlife, the rude simplicities of patriarchal modes of existence.  The\nCity is with us, and it has come to stay.  London grows vaster year by\nyear, and there is no sign of arrest in its prodigious life.  Is it\nthen a dream quite impossible and vain, that cities may be so\nadministered as to develop the best life of men, and not to stint it?\n\nI believe that it is possible, and, most of all, by the expansion of\nthe city area.  There was a reason why men should be closely packed\ntogether in mediaeval times, when cities had their defensive walls\nagainst invaders, but those conditions have long since passed away.\nEntire security of life makes for the dispersal of population, and in a\ncity like London, which has not been exposed to the perils of invasion\nfor more than two centuries, there is no reason why people should be\nconfined in narrow areas, From all that we can learn of the most\nancient cities of the world, such as Nineveh and Babylon, we know that\nthey covered enormous areas, although at no time were they secure from\nthe capricious tragedies of war.  Nineveh appears to have been a group\nof cities, united by a common government; cities of gardens and parks,\nso that the country flowed into the streets; cities in which the great\ntemples, and palaces, and public buildings were not confined to any one\nquarter, but were scattered through the entire area of the city, giving\nan equal dignity to its every part.  Let us apply the analogy to\nLondon.  Let us suppose a reconstructed London, devised upon the broad\nprinciple of ample space and air according to population; of\ncongregated and contiguous cities under a common government; of public\nbuildings of utility and beauty equally distributed; and it is easy to\nimagine a London that should combine all the charm of the country with\nthe advantages of the metropolis.  The splendid streets, which are the\nmain arteries of traffic, would remain, but the squalid tenements and\nalleys which are packed away behind them would disappear.  A long chain\nof parks and gardens would unite the West and East, taking the place of\na host of rotten rabbit-warrens, which are a disgrace to any civilised\ncommunity.  There would be no quarter of the town relinquished to the\nabsolutely poor; Poplar would have its palaces of wealthy merchants as\nwell as Kensington, St. Albans on the north, Reigate on the south,\nwould mark the limits of the city, and all the intervening space would\nbe filled with thriving colonies of Londoners, living in well-built\nhouses with ample gardens.  Manufactories would be distributed as well\nas mansions.  The various trades would not be huddled together in\nnarrow inconvenient corners of the metropolis; the factory, removed a\ndozen miles from Charing Cross, would take its workers with it, and\nbecome the nucleus of a new township.  The artisan would thus work\nwithin sight of his house, and that entire dislocation of home-life,\ninvolved by present conditions of labour, would disappear.  And each of\nthese townships would have its baths, libraries, and technical schools,\nnot dependent on local enterprise or generosity, but administered by a\ncentral body, composed of men of wide views and experience, who should\ndeserve the great title of the City Fathers; and each would be saved\nfrom the narrow spirit of suburbanism by the proud sense of its\ncorporate unity with London.\n\nSuch a London no doubt bears the aspect of a futile dream; yet it is\nworth while pointing out that in a dim and feeble way this has been the\nideal after which London has been groping ever since the day when the\npopulation first overflowed its normal boundaries.  The mischief has\nbeen that nothing has been done upon a grand scale and by organised\neffort.  A bit of open space has been bought for a park here and there,\nwhile a much larger bit has passed into the builder's hands through\nlocal indifference or apathy.  New suburbs have arisen in a day, not\nbecause any central power willed it, but simply by the combined greed,\nenergy, and enterprise of the speculative builder, who invariably\nbuilds rotten houses, which he sells as fast as he can to guileless\npeople with a passion for owning house-property.  The result has been\nconfusion, waste, and disappointment.  The new township rises without\nany adequate provision for roads or railway accommodation.  It is\nfilled by a migratory population who do not realise these\ninconveniences or ignore them, as long as the novelty of the thing\ncharms them; presently they move off again, a poorer population takes\ntheir place, rents drop, and another suburb is left to a precarious\nexistence.  I contend that this necessary expansion of the metropolis\nshould not be left to caprice; it should be designed upon broad lines\nof development.  The London County Council should buy up every acre of\nland that comes into the market within a thirty-five mile radius of\nCentral London.  It should be for the Council to decide whether such\nland as they acquired should be retained for parks and gardens, or\nutilised for building.  It should be in their sole power to decide the\nkind of buildings that should be erected, and to bind themselves to\nerect buildings of public utility and convenience, such as libraries,\nbaths, and concert-halls in a settled proportion to the number of\ndwelling-houses.  At all costs the speculative builder should be\neliminated.  He is the worst sort of parasite on the community.  His\ndishonesty is absolute, and the mischief which he works is little short\nof crime.  Since the County Council has established its right to build\nhouses, and has built them well, let it build all our houses, and give\nto other classes beside the artisan the advantage of substantial\ntenements.  Let it borrow as many millions as it pleases; no one will\ncomplain if its administration is efficient; and after all, we may as\nwell pay a fair rent to a central body, amenable to public opinion, as\nto a private individual whose own gain is the chief matter involved, We\ncannot do without the capitalist; but a Communal Capitalist is\ninfinitely preferable to a private capitalist.  Municipal Socialism is\nthe watchword of the future; and instead of being jealous of the\nexisting powers of the County Council, I would increase those powers\ntenfold; for without the widest kind of power, and even of despotic\npower, invested in some central authority, the chaotic expansion of\nLondon will go on to the enrichment of the few and the abiding injury\nof the many.\n\nOne of the greatest difficulties in this expansion of the area is the\nmeans of locomotion.  It is at present in the power of a railway\ncompany, which is after all only a private trading concern, to create\nor ruin the prosperity of a suburb by the kind of provision which it\nmakes for it necessities.  A good, rapid, cheap, and frequent service\nof trains is a matter of the utmost importance to a suburb.  But here\nagain, our method of expansion is left to chance and haphazard.  The\nspeculative builder does not trouble himself about a train-service; he\nknows by experience that he can attract a population to any given\nlocality, and he leaves the new residents to discover the\ninconveniences of the locality for themselves.  It might be supposed\nthat the railway company, in its own interest, would be quick to profit\nby the new population on its line of route; sometimes it does so, but\nin many instances it does not.  One would suppose by the grudging way\nin which extra trains are put on to meet the needs of an increased\npopulation, that the railway company was a beneficent association,\ngranting favours, instead of a trading concern in search of new\nbusiness.  The only real remedy for this kind of evil is that all the\nmeans of locomotion within a twenty-five miles radius of Charing Cross\nshould be in the hands of one central authority.  If a County Council\nis capable of superintending a tramway system, it should also be\ncapable of superintending the suburban railway system for the public\ngood.  And if it be thought much too vast an undertaking for the County\nCouncil to become the proprietor of all the suburban lines, it should\nat least be in the power of the Council to exercise effective control\nover their working, and to compel the companies to make adequate\nprovision for the outlying populations.\n\nBut it is clear that if factories and businesses were removed into\nsuburban districts, carrying their armies of workers with them, a good\npart of the difficulty of locomotion would soon settle itself.  It is\nthe enormous daily flow of population toward the centre that chokes the\nchannels of locomotion, and the wisest method of checking this flow is\nto make it unnecessary, by establishing manufacturing colonies, on the\npattern of Mr. Ellis Lever's and Mr. Cadbury's colonies at Port\nSunlight and Bourneville.  There would still remain the difficulty of\nlocomotion in the central districts, but with proper enterprise,\norganisation, and control, this difficulty is not insuperable.  In a\nfew years we shall look back with wonder and pity to the days when the\ninfrequent 'bus, the slow and tedious horse-tram, and the exorbitant\ncab were the means of locomotion in which a city of six million people\nput its trust.  The electric tram, clean, frequent, and rapid, will be\neverywhere; the electric cab will run at a normal fare of threepence a\nmile; perhaps also there will be electric overhead railways,\nconstructed upon a system which does not interfere with the perspective\nof the main thoroughfares, for the overhead electric railway, whatever\nmay be its defects, is a means of locomotion vastly preferable to the\nunventilated tubes on which we now pride ourselves.  May we not also\nhope that the general application of electric force will do much to\ncleanse our atmosphere?  With houses lit and warmed by electricity,\nfactories run by electric force, cooking done in electric ovens, the\nvile smoke which darkens and destroys the city would disappear.  The\nskies of London would be as pure as the sky of the Orkneys, and a\nhundred trees and plants, which now perish at the first touch of the\nfog-fiend, would grow in our city parks and gardens as freely as they\ngrow in Epping Forest.  With a fleet of electric boats upon the Thames,\nrunning at one minute intervals, the Thames would once more become the\nriver of pleasure, and a highway of popular traffic.  There is no\nreason why these things should not be.  All that is needed is that\nLondon, through its chosen representatives, should assume the full\ncontrol of its own life; working out the scheme of its improvement by\ndeliberate methods and upon a settled plan; compelling the obedience of\nall its citizens to a central authority, and intrusting to that\nauthority the complete management of its affairs, not as a means of\npersonal profit, but for the profit and the welfare of the whole\ncommunity.\n\nIn the meantime much may be done by personal enterprise.  Is there any\nreal reason why groups of persons, whose employment is in the city, but\nwhose hearts are in the country, should not found small colonies for\nthemselves on the outskirts of London?  Let a thousand householders\ncombine themselves into a company; let them choose their own site,\nbuild their own houses; let them erect their own Church--one Church\nupon the broad basis of charity instead of dogma would suffice--elect\ntheir own managing committee, and set themselves to the creation of a\ntrue community.  Let them possess their own electric plant for heating\nand lighting; let every house share the common convenience; and since\ndomestic labour forms one of the chief difficulties to-day, let common\ndining-halls be erected for every hundred persons, where good and cheap\nmeals could be provided, or from which such meals could be supplied to\nprivate houses, at the bare cost of their production.  Let it be the\naim of these communities to collect persons of not one trade or\nprofession only, but persons of varied occupations to compose their\ncitizenship, so that as many forms of human energy as might be possible\nshould be represented, each contributing its own element to the common\nlife.  Let all the trades permitted in the little township be conducted\non co-operative principles, and not for private gain.  Let due\nprovision be made for efficient education, for the cultivation of the\narts, and for the proper means of pleasure.  Would not such a\ncombination of men and women represent the best ideal of a human\ncommunity?  And can we not see that in the mere economy of means and\nmoney the gain by such a system would be immense?  Suppose the\ncapitalised value of such a township, including the purchase of land,\nthe erection of houses, draining, lighting, and so forth, were put at a\nmillion and a quarter sterling, which is a generous estimate, this\nwould impose upon the individual house-holders no more than 40 pounds\nper annum, calculated at 4 per cent.; and besides this he would share\nin the great economy of co-operative trading.  If this estimate be\nrejected as inadequate, it is easy to compute the cost by adding a\nburden of 10 pounds per annum to each house-holder for each quarter of\na million expended; but even if the total charge reached 50 pounds or\n60 pounds per annum for each householder, he would gain immensely in\nwhat he could get for his expenditure, compared with what he could get\nfor the same money in crowded London.  Such a scheme is simply the\napplication of the principle of co-operation to communal life.  It is\nnot chimerical; if it seem so, it is simply because we are so\nill-trained in morals that we are unwilling to act together in\npractical brotherhood.  It is not impracticable; it might be achieved\nto-morrow if we were in earnest over it.  There are hundreds of\nthoughtful men who have perceived its attractions, outlined its system,\nvaguely desired its benefits; are there not a thousand bold adventurers\nin London willing to bring their vague ideal to the test, and to make a\npractical experiment which, once successful, would alter the whole\nscience of living, and go far to solve some of the most difficult\nproblems of our time?\n\nIt is for such a movement that I wait.  Free and glad as my life among\nthe mountains has been, yet I am sensible that I am deprived of many\nelements of human intercourse, which are efficacious in the growth of\nthought and the widening of the mind.  I count my deprivation light\ncompared with the higher gains that are mine in the composure of my\nmind, the joy of animal vitality, the tranquil days that leave no\nbitterness and bring no discord, each joined to each in 'natural\npiety,' each inwoven into the calm rhythm of fulfilled desire and duty.\nBut my pleasure is too little shared to be entirely satisfactory.  I\nsee that there are terms on which my happiness might be communicated;\nthat there is a mode of life that should combine all the delight of\nhuman intercourse with the tranquillity of natural existence; that the\nchoice does not lie, and ought not to lie, between the city and the\ndesert; that it is only by the folly of man, only by his greed, and\nhaste, and carelessness, and contempt for the communal principle, that\nsuch a choice is forced upon me.  The Regenerated City will come in\ntime, too late perhaps for me to enjoy it; but the City Colony or\nCommune may come at any time; and when it comes I will gladly be its\nconscript, I will earnestly labour for its welfare, I will humbly seek\nto promote its success, believing that in the degree that society\nexchanges individualism for co-operation, personal gain for common\ngood, man will enter on the widening evolution of a real progress, and\nfind the path that leads him to a truly Golden Age.","title":"The Quest of the Simple Life","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":49029}