6 City Homes on Country Lanes 



mind there was no dignity like the dignity of a perma- 

 nent family home from which all members of the house- 

 hold went forth into the world, and to which they 

 might all come back on occasion. 



To me the contrast between the repose of that street 

 of old family homes and the restlessness of newer sec- 

 tions was always very striking. It was an industrial 

 town that grew rapidly. As factories multiplied, new 

 population flowed in; at first from the surrounding 

 country and then from foreign parts, until the number 

 of languages spoken was amazing. This new popula- 

 tion was mostly of floating character. It was housed 

 in crowded tenements. The part of the town where it 

 lived tended toward slum conditions. It was, of course, 

 the very opposite of the street of old family homes. 

 The gulf between them was not wealth and poverty. 

 It was a far deeper gulf. It was dignity and the lack 

 of dignity, and that is a matter of character, not of 

 worldly possessions. But environment and training 

 have everything to do with character. 



The lesson borne in upon me was that ownership 

 and permanence of the home are essential to the highest 

 dignity of life. Now it oddly happened that I was 

 never to know these advantages in my own experience. 

 While we owned more than one home in the course of 

 our lives, they were only temporary, because it was of 

 the nature of our work that we should be constantly 

 on the move. This work had to do with the making of 

 homes for thousands of people in many States. I have 

 always thought of it as evangelical work, and of my 

 husband as an evangelist of the Peter-the-Hermit sort. 



My longing was for a home that might become a 



