40 City Homes on Country Lanes 



of every-day life ; you are thrilled through and through. 

 Is it the music? The setting? Not wholly, though both 

 are fine. More than anything else, it is the presence of 

 the multitude, of massed humanity. It is the subtle ex- 

 pression of the gregarious instinct, colored with a con- 

 sciousness of the divine. 



My point is that the experience is possible only to 

 urban life. It requires people, masses of people; it 

 requires money, millions of money; it requires lofty 

 idealism, based on deep concern for the common wel- 

 fare and happiness. And these impulses, I insist, are 

 the product of organized municipal life, rather than of 

 the unorganized and severely individualistic forms of 

 a rural life that is passing away. Let it go — the sooner 

 the better! 



I have touched here, it is admitted, on a high point 

 of city life, which is by no means one long Sunday in a 

 park with band concerts. That, however, is but a 

 single feature of a way of life that is replete with at- 

 tractions appealing to the spirit; with deep satisfac- 

 tions for the hearts of average men and women. 



The big department store is about equal to the old 

 county fair as an entertainment, and considerably more 

 up to date. Theaters, restaurants, lectures, movies, 

 occasional great pageants — even the frequent thrilling 

 passage of fire engines through crowded streets — add 

 to the zest and charm of life. Those who can spend 

 freely get the best of it, perhaps, yet everybody drinks 

 at the fountain of city life. Even to mingle with the 

 throng is somewhat satisfying, for we resemble "Helen's 

 Babies" and like to "see the wheels go 'round." The 



