ers, and on the same terms. For the middling sort of
people in the future maintaining a separate _menage_ there is nothing
for it but the practically automatic house or flat, supplemented,
perhaps, by the restaurant or the hotel.

Almost certainly, for reasons detailed in the second chapter of these
Anticipations, this household, if it is an ideal type, will be situated
away from the central "Town" nucleus and in pleasant surroundings. And I
imagine that the sort of woman who would be mother and mistress of such
a home would not be perfectly content unless there were a garden about
the house. On account of the servant difficulty, again, this garden
would probably be less laboriously neat than many of our gardens
to-day--no "bedding-out," for example, and a certain parsimony of mown
lawn....

To such a type of home it seems the active, scientifically trained
people will tend. But usually, I think, the prophet is inclined to over
estimate the number of people who will reach this condition of affairs
in a generation or so, and to under estimate the conflicting tendencies
that will make its attainment difficult to all, and impossible to many,
and that will for many years tint and blotch the achievement of those
who succeed with patches of unsympathetic colour. To understand just how
modifications may come in, it is necessary to consider the probable line
of development of another of the four main elements in the social body
of the coming time. As a consequence and visible expression of the
great new growth of share and stock property there will be scattered
through the whole social body, concentrated here perhaps, and diffused
there, but everywhere perceived, the members of that new class of the
irresponsible wealthy, a class, as I have already pointed out in the
preceding chapter, miscellaneous and free to a degree quite
unprecedented in the world's history. Quite inevitably great sections of
this miscellany will develop characteristics almost diametrically
opposed to those of the typical working expert class, and their
gravitational attraction may influence the lives of this more efficient,
finally more powerful, but at present much less wealthy, class to a very
considerable degree of intimacy.

The rich shareholder and the skilled expert must necessarily be sharply
contrasted types, and of the two it must be borne in mind that it is the
rich shareholder who spends the money. While occupation and skill
incline one towa