238 THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 



village life I suppose it might be worse. It is 

 not true that man made the city, that God made 

 the country, and that the devil made the village 

 in between ; but it is pretty nearly true, perhaps. 



But the Commuter, it must be remembered, is 

 a social creature, especially the Commuter's wife, 

 and no near kin to stumps and stars. They may 

 do to companion the prophetic soul, not, how- 

 ever, the average Commuter, for he is common 

 and human, and needs his own kind. Any scheme 

 of life that ignores this human hankering is sure 

 to come to grief; any benevolent plan for home- 

 steading the city poor that would transfer them 

 from the garish day of the slums to the sweet soli- 

 tudes of unspoiled nature had better provide them 

 with copies of " The Pleasures of Melancholy " 

 and leave them to bask on their fire-escapes. 



Though to my city friends I seem somewhat 

 remote and incontiguous, still I am not dissevered 

 and dispersed from my kind, for I am only twenty 

 miles from Boston Common, and as I write I 

 hear the lowing of a neighbor's cows, and the 

 voices of his children as they play along the 

 brook below, and off among the fifteen square 

 miles of treetops that fill my front yard, I see 



