178 City Homes on Country Lanes 



information and intelligence, in regard to big things 

 that are happening all of the time. The same thing 

 may be done in a big city, of course, and is done in 

 extraordinary cases. But in a garden city the matter 

 is reduced to a science. We make a business of it, 

 deliberately setting out on a voyage of intellectual 

 discovery, and making it a matter of common pride to 

 keep abreast of the world's progress. We have the 

 spirit and the facilities to do it, and we do it! Speak- 

 ing again from experience, I can testify that it is a 

 great privilege, appreciated by everybody, including 

 some to whom it would not be expected to appeal. 



I have a very clear recollection of the first evening 

 of this kind I ever experienced perhaps the first occa- 

 sion when such a programme was carried out in such a 

 community. It was inaugurated by a young woman 

 of brilliant intellectual attainments, a graduate of 

 Vassar, who had had the benefit of post-graduate 

 courses at Columbia and at Stanford; and, though 

 the affair was held in a tent, it is no exaggeration to 

 say that it would not have proven disappointing if 

 held at Carnegie Hall, New York. It covered every 

 worth-while topic of contemporaneous interest, pre- 

 senting not only the essential facts, but philosophic 

 deductions that enlarged the outlook of all hearers. 

 For example, , Bleriot had just made the first flight 

 across the English Channel, and, upon the strength of 

 what now seems a trivial achievement, we soared 

 through the skies of the future on the airplane a 

 future now fully realized and become commonplace. 

 Indeed, under that extremely intelligent leading we en- 

 joyed a luminous vision of the new intellectual universe 



