ill end in a restaurant, while the yokel's tamest
adventure may end in a police-court. If he smashes a window he can
pay for it; if he smashes a man he can pension him. He can (like the
millionaire in the story) buy an hotel to get a glass of gin. And
because he, the luxurious man, dictates the tone of nearly all
"advanced" and "progressive" thought, we have almost forgotten what a
home really means to the overwhelming millions of mankind.

For the truth is, that to the moderately poor the home is the only place
of liberty. Nay, it is the only place of anarchy. It is the only spot
on the earth where a man can alter arrangements suddenly, make an
experiment or indulge in a whim. Everywhere else he goes he must accept
the strict rules of the shop, inn, club, or museum that he happens to
enter. He can eat his meals on the floor in his own house if he likes.
I often do it myself; it gives a curious, childish, poetic, picnic
feeling. There would be considerable trouble if I tried to do it in
an A.B.C. tea-shop. A man can wear a dressing gown and slippers in his
house; while I am sure that this would not be permitted at the Savoy,
though I never actually tested the point. If you go to a restaurant
you must drink some of the wines on the wine list, all of them if you
insist, but certainly some of them. But if you have a house and garden
you can try to make hollyhock tea or convolvulus wine if you like. For a
plain, hard-working man the home is not the one tame place in the world
of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set
tasks. The home is the one place where he can put the carpet on the
ceiling or the slates on the floor if he wants to. When a man spends
every night staggering from bar to bar or from music-hall to music-hall,
we say that he is living an irregular life. But he is not; he is living
a highly regular life, under the dull, and often oppressive, laws of
such places. Some times he is not allowed even to sit down in the bars;
and frequently he is not allowed to sing in the music-halls. Hotels may
be defined as places where you are forced to dress; and theaters may
be defined as places where you are forbidden to smoke. A man can only
picnic at home.

Now I take, as I have said, this small human omnipotence, this
possession of a definite cell or chamber of liberty, as the working
model for the present inquiry. Whether we can give every English man
a free home of his own or not, at least we sh