XLIII 



THE unwritten edict, surely the most tyrannical and 

 Town irrational to which suffering man ever bent 



^i^ nis neck > which decrees that well-to-do folk 

 might be. W ] 1O h^Q spacious country homes shall desert 

 them for at least three of the fairest months in the 

 year, and immure themselves in costly and narrow 

 town quarters that edict, I say, seems so immutable, 

 that it is wisest to accept it, and render it as endurable 

 as possible. 



Nothing less than the precession of the equinoxes 

 can ever render London an open-air city. That Queen's 

 weather, which made the Jubilee summers of 1887 

 and 1897 memorable among decades of fitful or 

 adverse seasons, would enable us, could we count on 

 it, to give ourselves al fresco airs, to line our 

 pavements with cafe chairs, to dine and sup under the 

 stars, and use our houses only for work or sleep ; but, as 

 things are, we have to pay the penalty of disregarding 

 the obvious lesson of Nature ; so long as we persist in 

 swarming into London when it is least habitable, instead 



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