celdama, our Potter's
Field, only approached by the athletic, who keep their eyes from
Nature's indiscretion by vigorous sets of tennis in the purple shadow of
the cliff.

Life is queerly inverted in Marathon. Nature has been so bullied and
repressed that she fawns about us timidly. No well-conducted suburban
shrubbery would think of assuming autumn tints before the ladies have
got into their fall fashions. Indeed none of our chaste trees will even
shed their leaves while any one is watching; and they crouch modestly in
the shade of our massive garages. They have been taught their place. In
Marathon it is a worse sin to have your lawn uncut than to have your
books or your hair uncut. I have been aware of indignant eyes because I
let my back garden run wild. And yet I flatter myself it was not mere
sloth. No! I want the Urchin to see what this savage, tempestuous world
is like. What preparation for life is a village where Nature comes to
heel like a spaniel? When a thunderstorm disorganizes our electric
lights for an hour or so we feel it a personal affront. Let my rearward
plot be a deep-tangled wild-wood where the happy Urchin may imagine
something more ferocious lurking than a posse of radishes. Indeed, I
hardly know whether Marathon is a safe place to bring up a child. How
can he learn the horrors of drink in a village where there is no saloon?
Or the sadness of the seven deadly sins where there is no movie? Or
deference to his betters where the chauffeurs, in their withered leather
legs, drive limousines to the drug store to buy expensive cigars, while
their employers walk to the station puffing briar pipes?

I had been hoping that the war would knock some of this topsy-turvy
nonsense out of us. Maybe it has. Sometimes I see on the faces of our
commuters the unaccustomed agitation of thought. At least we still have
the grace to call ourselves a suburb, and not (what we fancy ourselves)
a superurb. But I don't like the pretense that runs like a jarring note
through the music of our life. Why is it that those who are doing the
work must pretend they are not doing it; and those not doing the work
pretend that they are? I see that the motor messenger girls who drive
high-powered cars wear Sam Browne belts and heavy-soled boots, whereas
the stalwart colored wenches who labor along the tracks of the Cinder
and Bloodshot console themselves with flimsy waists and light slippers.
(A fact!) By and by the Urchin will notice t