A SANITARY OUTLOOK 369 



checking overcrowding in towns is by improving housing in the country. 

 We are told that the flower of the agricultural class flock to the towns 

 because they dislike the monotony of country life and long for excite- 

 ment and variety. That is so, no doubt, to a large extent, and perhaps 

 our present system of education is calculated to foster discontent with 

 the peasant's lot, and engender vague ambition, restlessness, and a thirst 

 for rousing stimulants, but I suspect that another contingent of country 

 folk find their way into the towns, not so much attracted by their 

 glamor as repelled by the dingy wretchedness they leave behind them. 

 Agriculture is. after all, the most varied and least monotonous of em- 

 ployments, and could the cottages of the laborers be made wholesome 

 and attractive, and the village life invested with some interest, many 

 who now migrate to the towns would stay at home, and many who are 

 in the towns and have tried them and failed, would be glad to be 

 translated back to the land. I feel sure that many of the laboring 

 class, under the goad of poverty, quit with reluctance the fields they 

 have tilled and cast many a lingering bulging look behind at the 

 dilapidated hut that sheltered their childhood. The Anglo-Saxon has 

 always had a deep-rooted attachment to his ' ham ' and his ' ton.' 

 Home sickness is not, perhaps, as common as it used to be, but the 

 homing instinct still exists amongst us and is to be diligently kept alive 

 if our race is to avoid disintegration. Xothing has seemed to me 

 to presage the pouring forth of the vial of the seventh angel more 

 imminently than the proposal, seriously made, that all infants at birth 

 should be taken away from their parents and brought up in public 

 institutions, foundlings of the state, a system under which all virtue 

 would forthwith go out of us leaving us mere dry husks of mankind. 

 And nothing has seemed to me more minatory for the future of our 

 empire than the decay — for there is some decay — of home life amongst 

 us. The affluent classes in great numbers voluntarily resign its 

 charms for the luxurious indulgence of the club and restaurant, and the 

 round of pleasure, as it is called; and the poor, through no fault of 

 their own, are in large numbers deprived of them, for it is impossible 

 for the tender associations of the home to evolve in a temporary bur- 

 row in a town warren. They have a tenement or lodging, but no home; 

 but a vestige of the old home sentiment is sometimes seen, as Mr. 

 Bray assures us, in the fidelity with which the} r cling in poverty to some 

 bit of furniture — a table, a chair or clock that has stood the wear and. 

 tear of time. But if we are to rescue the submerged tenth and redeem 

 the very poor, we must somehow see that decent homes are provided for 

 them. The finest feelings, the firmest principles are nourished in the 

 home; a genuine man's joys, hopes and ambitions should center in it. 

 Truly did the great poet of my country — who was not only a poet but a 

 deep-seeing social reformer — exclaim : 



vol. Lxvnr. — 24. 



