28 MY AMERICAN FRIENDS

doorsteps; another a colony of Italian or Japanese
market-gardeners (" truck-farmers" they call
them here) dwelling in painted wooden houses
placed at haphazard in the landscape, with a smell
of celery pervading the atmosphere ; another a
sprawling, amorphous region dotted with untidy
farm houses, all exactly alike even to the abomin-
able litter surrounding them; another, perhaps,
just in the place where a village ought to be, a
flamboyant collection of restaurants, filling
stations, apple stalls, hot-doggeries, chicken-
luncheries and other devices for the ministration
of victuals, a car-haunted, advertisement disfigured
creation of yesterday, noisy by day and gorgeously
lit up at night by electric power generated from
the neighbouring cataract. To reach even such
places as these one has generally to go far afield,
at least from the great cities, passing through
dismal intermediate regions of great extent,
littered with human habitations, factories, gas
tanks, industrial debris, derelict cars and rubbish
of every conceivable denomination—unspeakable
regions bearing on their forehead the signs of
eternal reprobation, more distinctly, I think,
.than our British slums, though these, God knows,
have it distinctly enough. For sheer ugliness the
earth has nothing worse to show than the be-
draggled skirts of New York, Philadelphia,
Chicago and many another. If a master of men
were to take command of us surely the rebuilding
of cities would be the first task he would order