150 Four-i7i-Ha7id in Britain. 



tumbler, and this they fill with a liquid resembling — . 

 ah — like — ah — " *' Anything like beer, your honor, for 

 instance?" If Jehu didn't get his complimentary glass 

 at the next halt, that Don was a muff. 



The rain ceased, as usual, before we had gone far, 

 and we had a clear dry run until luncheon. We see the 

 Black Country now, rows of little dingy houses beyond, 

 with tall smoky chimneys vomiting smoke, mills and 

 factories at every turn, coal pits and rolling mills and 

 blast furnaces, the very bottomless pit itself ; and such 

 dirty, careworn children, hard-driven men, and squalid 

 women. To think of the green lanes, the larks, the 

 Arcadia we have just left. How can people be got to 

 live such terrible lives as they seem condemned to 

 here ? Why do they not all run away to the green 

 fields just beyond ? Pretty rural Coventry suburbs in 

 the morning and Birmingham at noon ; the lights and 

 shadows of human existence can rarely be brought into 

 sharper contrast. If 



" Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay " 



surely better a year in Leamington than life's span in 

 the Black Country ! But do not let us forget that it is 

 just Pittsburgh over again ; nay, not even quite so bad, 

 for that city bears the palm for dirt against the world. 

 The fact is, however, that life in such places seems at- 

 tractive to those born to rural life, and large smoky 

 cities drain the country ; but surely this may be safely 



