knock!" they said. And
every year or so they boomed a great Clean-up Week, when everybody was
supposed to get rid of the tin cans in his backyard.

They were happiest when the tearing down and building up were most
riotous, and when new factory districts were thundering into life. In
truth, the city came to be like the body of a great dirty man, skinned,
to show his busy works, yet wearing a few barbaric ornaments; and such
a figure carved, coloured, and discoloured, and set up in the
market-place, would have done well enough as the god of the new people.
Such a god they had indeed made in their own image, as all peoples make
the god they truly serve; though of course certain of the idealists
went to church on Sunday, and there knelt to Another, considered to
be impractical in business. But while the Growing went on, this god
of their market-place was their true god, their familiar and
spirit-control. They did not know that they were his helplessly obedient
slaves, nor could they ever hope to realize their serfdom (as the first
step toward becoming free men) until they should make the strange and
hard discovery that matter should serve man's spirit.

"Prosperity" meant good credit at the bank, black lungs, and housewives'
Purgatory. The women fought the dirt all they could; but if they let the
air into their houses they let in the dirt. It shortened their lives,
and kept them from the happiness of ever seeing anything white. And
thus, as the city grew, the time came when Lucy, after a hard struggle,
had to give up her blue-and-white curtains and her white walls. Indoors,
she put everything into dull gray and brown, and outside had the little
house painted the dark green nearest to black. Then she knew, of course,
that everything was as dirty as ever, but was a little less distressed
because it no longer looked so dirty as it was.

These were bad times for Amberson Addition. This quarter, already old,
lay within a mile of the centre of the town, but business moved in other
directions; and the Addition's share of Prosperity was only the smoke
and dirt, with the bank credit left out. The owners of the original
big houses sold them, or rented them to boarding-house keepers, and the
tenants of the multitude of small houses moved "farther out" (where the
smoke was thinner) or into apartment houses, which were built by dozens
now. Cheaper tenants took their places, and the rents were lower and
lower, and the houses shabbier