become box numbers along rural postal routes.

Why do city-bred people betake themselves to the country? The surface
reasons are as many as why they are Republicans or Democrats, but the
basic one is escape from congestion and confusion. For themselves or
their children their goal is the open country beyond the suburban
fringe. Here the children, like young colts, can be turned out to run
and race, kick up their heels and enjoy life, free of warnings to be
quiet lest they annoy the elderly couple in the apartment below or the
nervous wreck the other side of that suburban privet hedge.

The day and night rattle and bang of the city may go unnoticed for
years but eventually it takes its toll. Then comes a great longing to
get away from it all. If family income is independent of salary earned
by a city job, there is nothing to the problem. Free from a desk in
some skyscraper that father must tend from nine to five, such a family
can select its country home hours away from the city. Ideal! But few
are so fortunate. Most of us consider ourselves lucky to have that
city job. It is to be treated with respect and for us the answer lies
in locating just beyond those indefinite boundaries that limit the
urban zone. With the larger cities, this may be as much as fifty miles
from the business center; with smaller ones the gap can be bridged
speedily by automobile.

Going to live in the country, viewed dispassionately as an
accountant's balance sheet, has attributes that can be recorded in
black ink as well as those that require a robust crimson. If you
really want a place where you need not be constantly rubbing elbows
with the rest of the world; where you can cultivate something more
ambitious than window boxes or an eight by ten pocket-handkerchief
garden; where subways and street clatter can be forgotten; your black
column will be far longer than the one in red. But if nothing feels so
good to your foot as smooth unyielding pavements; if the multicolored
electric sign of a moving picture palace is more entrancing than a
vivid sunset; you are at heart a city bird, intended by temperament to
nest behind walls of brick and steel. There is nothing you can do
about it either. In the country the nights are so black; the birds at
dawn too noisy; and Nature when she storms and scolds, is a fish-wife.
Possibly you can learn to endure it all but will the game be worth the
candle? Without true fondness for outdoors and an inner urge for