atness of an
awful monotony. The slums vex me far less. There I find adventure and
jest whatever the squalor; the marks of the primitive struggle through
dirt and darkness towards release. Those horrible lines of moody,
complacent streets represent not struggle, but the achievement of a
worthless aspiration. The houses, with their deadly similarity, their
smug, false exteriors, their conformity to an ideal which is typified by
their poor imitative decoration, could only be inhabited by people who
have no thought or desire for expression.... The dwellers in such
districts are cramped into the vice of their environment. Their homes
represent the dull concession to a state rule; and their lives take tone
from the grey, smoke-grimed repetition of one endlessly repeated design.
The same foolish ornamentation on every house reiterates the same
suggestion. Their places of worship, the blank chapels and pseudo-Gothic
churches rear themselves head and shoulders above the dull level, only
to repeat the same threat of obedience to a gloomy law.... The thought
of Gospel Oak and its like is the thought of imitation, of imitation
falling back and becoming stereotyped, until the meaning of the thing so
persistently copied has been lost and forgotten."

A third case is that of the country child, the child who attends the
village school. Many villages lie several miles from a railway station,
so that the younger children may not see a railway train more than once
or twice a year. The fathers may be engaged in village trades, such as a
shoemaker, carpenter, gardener, general shop merchant, farm labourer, or
farmer. The village houses are often cramped and small, but there is
wholesome space outside, and generally a good garden which supplies some
of the family food; milk and eggs are easily obtainable, and conditions
of living are seldom as crowded as in a town. The country children see
more of life in complete miniature than the slum or the suburban child
can do, for the whole life of the village lies before him. The school
is generally in the centre, with a good playground, and of late years a
good school garden is frequent. The village church, generally old, is
another centre of life, and there is at least the vicarage to give a
type of life under different social conditions.

The home intellectual background may vary, but on the whole cannot be
reckoned on very much; though in some ways it is more narrow than the
suburban one, it is