for wigwams in Shepherd's Bush, and in the excessive demand for wigwams
the cause of the increase in the price of wigwams.

"Simple!" you say, disdainfully. Everything--the whole complex
movement of the universe--is as simple as that--when you can
sufficiently put two and two together. And, my dear sir, perhaps you
happen to be an estate agent's clerk, and you hate the arts, and you
want to foster your immortal soul, and you can't be interested in your
business because it's so humdrum.

Nothing is humdrum.

The tremendous, changeful picturesqueness of life is marvellously shown
in an estate agent's office. What! There was a block of traffic in
Oxford Street; to avoid the block people actually began to travel under
the cellars and drains, and the result was a rise of rents in
Shepherd's Bush! And you say that isn't picturesque! Suppose you were
to study, in this spirit, the property question in London for an hour
and a half every other evening. Would it not give zest to your
business, and transform your whole life?

You would arrive at more difficult problems. And you would be able to
tell us why, as the natural result of cause and effect, the longest
straight street in London is about a yard and a half in length, while
the longest absolutely straight street in Paris extends for miles. I
think you will admit that in an estate agent's clerk I have not chosen
an example that specially favours my theories.

You are a bank clerk, and you have not read that breathless romance
(disguised as a scientific study), Walter Bagehot's "Lombard Street"?
Ah, my dear sir, if you had begun with that, and followed it up for
ninety minutes every other evening, how enthralling your business would
be to you, and how much more clearly you would understand human nature.

You are "penned in town," but you love excursions to the country and
the observation of wild life--certainly a heart-enlarging diversion.
Why don't you walk out of your house door, in your slippers, to the
nearest gas lamp of a night with a butterfly net, and observe the wild
life of common and rare moths that is beating about it, and co-ordinate
the knowledge thus obtained and build a superstructure on it, and at
last get to know something about something?

You need not be devoted to the arts, not to literature, in order to
live fully.

The whole field of daily habit and scene is waiting to satisfy that
curiosity which means life, and the satisfaction of which