CHAPTER III

CITIES

New Tork.

THE rural population of America has been greatly
depleted in recent years by the drift to the towns,
but still numbers nearly half the total for the
country, scattered over a vast area. Yet, in spite
of this vast area and the millions engaged
in the cultivation of the land, Mr. Chesterton
was not far wrong when he described America
as a country with no villages. There are many
places which Americans call by that name but
none, so far as my observation goes, which
corresponds, except perhaps remotely, to what an
Englishman means by it. To such places I have
often been taken by friends, sometimes in response
to. my definite request to see a " village," but
could never find in any of them the thing I was
in search of—a thing difficult to define, I must
admit (except in a dictionary), but one of which no
Englishman needs a definition. One would turn
out to be a residential preserve; another a small
town dating, perhaps, from Colonial days and
tolerably picturesque; another a hugger-mugger
of shacks with negroes sunning themselves on the