2 FLIGHT FROM THE CITY 



too much sedentary work, and too much of the 

 smoke and noise and dust of the city; when we had 

 to work just as hard to get to the places in which we 

 tried to entertain ourselves as we had to get to the 

 places in which we worked; when our lives were bar- 

 ren of real beauty the beauty which comes only 

 from contact with nature and from the growth of 

 the soil, from flowers and fruits, from gardens and 

 trees, from birds and animals? 



We couldn't. Even though we were able for years 

 and years, like so many others, to forget the fact 

 to ignore it amid the host of distractions which make 

 up city life. 



And then in 1920, the year of the great housing 

 shortage, the house in which we were living was sold 

 over our heads. New York in 1920 was no place for 

 a houseless family. Rents, owing to the shortage of 

 building which dated back to the World War, were 

 outrageously high. Evictions were epidemic to en- 

 able rapacious landlords to secure higher rents from 

 new tenants and most of the renters in the city 

 seemed to be in the courts trying to secure the pro- 

 tection of the Emergency Rent Laws. We had the 

 choice of looking for an equally endurable home in 

 the city, of reading endless numbers of classified ad- 

 vertisements, of visiting countless real estate agents, 

 of walking weary miles and climbing endless flights 

 of steps, in an effort to rent another home, or of 

 flight from the city. And while we were trying to 

 prepare ourselves for the struggle with this typical 



