he hostile dignity of the past cannot
survive when one man mows the lawn and the other clips the roses, each
in his own garden, separated only by three sticks and some barbed wire.
In detached houses it is worse, for they are now so close together that
in certain architectural conditions preliminaries are required before
one can take a private bath. The whole direction of domestic
architecture is against the individual and for the group. The modern
home takes away even the old stores; there are no more pickle cupboards
and jam cupboards, and hardly linen cupboards. Why should there be when
jam and pickles come from the grocer, and few men have more than twelve
shirts? There is not even a store for coal. Some years ago I lived in a
house that was built in 1820, and its coal cellar held eight tons; I now
inhabit one, built in 1860, in which I can accommodate four tons; the
house now being built in the suburbs cannot receive more than one ton.
The evolution of the coal cellar is a little the evolution of English
society from the time when every man had to live a good deal for
himself, until slightly better distribution made it possible for him to
combine with his fellows. He need not now store coal, for there is a
service of coal to his doorstep. Besides, the offspring of coal are
expelling their ancestor; gas and electricity, both centrally supplied
from a single source, are sapping the old hearthstone that was fed by
one small family, and for that family alone glowed. A continual
socialization has come about, and it is not going to stop. What is done
in common is on the whole better done, more cheaply done. But what is
done in common is hostile to the old home spirit, because the principle
of the home spirit is that anything done in common is--well, common!

As for the old houses of fifteen to sixteen rooms, they have had to
accommodate themselves to the new conditions. First they tried to
maintain themselves by reducing their rents. I know of a case, in
Courtfield Gardens, where a house leased twenty-six years ago at one
thousand dollars a year, was leased again about ten years ago at seven
hundred and fifty dollars a year, and is now being offered at five
hundred dollars a year. The owner does not want his premises turned into
a boarding house, but he cannot find a private tenant, because hardly
anybody nowadays can manage five floors and a basement. In my own
district, where the houses tower up to heaven, I see the pro