SUBURBAN NEIGHBORHOODS. 31 



ity of their people. It may be said that such homes as we speak 

 of, in the suburbs of great cities, would be simply village resi- 

 dences. It is true ; but they would be villages of a broader, more 

 generous, and cosmopolitan character than old-fashioned villages. 

 Post-offices, shops and groceries, butchers, bakers, blacksmiths, 

 shoemakers, and laborers of all kinds must be near by, and a 

 part of our community, or there would be no living at all ; but 

 where a large, and probably the most wealthy, part of the inhabit- 

 ants go daily to the city centre to transact business, the amount of 

 traffic carried on in the village or suburban centre will not be large 

 enough to seriously injure the general rural character of the vicin- 

 ity. The stir of thrifty industry is in itself refreshing, and the 

 attractions of lecture, concert, and dancing halls, and ice-cream re- 

 sorts, cannot be dispensed with. 



We believe this kind of half-country, half-town life, is the happy 

 medium, and the realizable ideal for the great majority of well-to- 

 do Americans. The few families who have a unanimity of warm 

 and long-continued love for more isolated and more picturesquely 

 rural, or more practically rural homes, are exceptions. The mass 

 of men and women are more gregarious. Very poetical or reflec- 

 tive minds, or persons absorbed in mutual domestic loves, find 

 some of their deepest pleasure in seclusion with Nature. But the 

 zest even of their calm pleasures in the country is greatly height- 

 ened by frequent contrasts with city excitements, and by the com- 

 pany of sympathetic minds, who enjoy what they enjoy. A philo- 

 sophic Frenchman, who lived much alone, was once asked by a 

 lady if he did not find solitude very sweet. He replied, " Indeed, 

 madam, when you have some pleasant friend to whom you can say, 

 ' Oh, how sweet is solitude.' " A suburban home, therefore, meets 

 the wants of refined and cultivated people more than any other. 



