380 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. [Suss. LXxu. 
who seem so far from understanding the spirit of George 
Heriot, that they are more inclined to create new bursaries 
by erecting incipient slums than to promote the cause of a 
Garden City. Whatever happens, let us not reduce but 
rather expand the area of working-men’s garden grounds. 
We cannot have all these within the city bounds, but in 
these days of cheap and easy transit, why should it not be 
possible to have land sufficiently near the city, say in the 
direction of Davidson’s Mains or Cramond, where every city 
dweller who has no garden in the town might, if he so 
wished, have a small plot of land for himself and his family 
to cultivate? I am persuaded that the idea is practicable, 
and the results, I feel assured, would bring a vast ameliora- 
tion of those elements of city life which are the despair of 
every thoughtful citizen. In the words of Arthur Bennett :— 
“T can see the people crowding from the alleys, 
And from reeking court and slum, 
To the freshness and the verdure of these valleys— 
They are singing as they come ; 
And the nightmare of the old life closes, 
And the sickness and the heartache melt away, 
As they toil with willing hands amid the roses, 
Where the rainbow fountains play.” 
