1 88 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



increased taxation, (though that spirit, as I have 

 hinted, has a wonderful catlike watchfulness,) as in 

 the private jealousies that must be harmonized before 

 any large real estate improvement is practicable. I 

 defy any benevolent gentleman, in a town of thirty 

 thousand active, and newspaper-reading inhabitants, 

 to propose a scheme for a public garden or park, upon 

 a designated spot of ground, without starting an 

 angry buzz of opposition from other equally benevo- 

 lent gentlemen, who see in it only a device to bring 

 about the rapid appreciation of property which is not 

 their own. The quick-sightedness with which the 

 philanthropists of one side of a smallish city will detect 

 flaws in the philanthropy of men living on the other 

 side of a smallish city, is indeed something marvellous. 

 Thus it happens that some brave and honest project 

 for park or water supply, or sewerage, will welter for 

 years in some slough of opposing doubts, all whose 

 obstructing slime is made up of such miserable, local 

 jealousies as I have hinted at. The same traces of 

 satanic influence belong, I think, to the philosophers 

 who make up our national Congress, so that our 

 best bits of legislation seem to come upon us by ac- 

 cident, when our wisest legislators are asleep, or tired, 

 or worse. 



In the days of our present civilization and educa- 

 tion, it is hardly to be doubted that the majority of 



