rs in the
world--but seventeen was the normal.

The trains which every day came rushing in from the country to the
various railway termini of London were almost past counting. The "rural
exodus," as it was called, was a sadly real movement then. Every one of
them brought at least one Bessie, and one of her male counterparts, with
ruddy cheeks, a tin box, and bright eyes straining to "see life."
Insatiable London drew them all into its maw, and, while sapping the
roses from their cheeks, enslaved many of them under one of the greatest
curses of that day: the fascination of the streets.

So terrible a power was exercised by this unwholesome passion that men
and women became paralyzed by it, and incapable of plucking up courage
enough to enable them to leave the streets. I talked with men--poor,
sodden creatures, whose greasy black coats were buttoned to their
stubbly chins to hide the absence of collar and waistcoat--who supported
a wretched existence in the streets, between begging, stealing, opening
cab-doors, and the like, in constant dread of police attention. Among
these I found many who had refused again and again offers of help to
lead an honest, self-dependent life, for the sole reason that these
offers involved quitting the streets.

The same creeping paralysis of the streets kept men from emigration to
parts of the Empire in which independent prosperity was assured for the
willing worker. They would not leave the hiving streets, with their
chances, their flaunting vice, their incessant bustle, and their
innumerable drinking bars.

The disease did not stop at endowing the streets with fascination for
these poor, undisciplined, unmanned creatures; it implanted in them a
lively fear, hard to comprehend, but very real to them, of all places
outside the streets, with their familiar, pent noises and enclosed
strife.

I met one old gentleman, the head of an important firm of printers, who,
being impressed with the squalid wretchedness of the surroundings in
which his work-people lived, decided to shift his works into the
country. He chose the outskirts of a charmingly situated garden city,
then in course of formation. He gave his people a holiday and
entertained them at a picnic party upon the site of his proposed new
works. He set before them plans and details of pleasant cottages he
meant to build for them, with good gardens, and scores of conveniences
which they could never know in the dingy, grimy tenements f