nd of mental
drug-habit. And its origin is physical. It is a morbid condition
induced by the over-paced life of cities.

Long before the rise of the modern city--indeed, more than a century
ago--Goethe, who was considerably more than a century ahead of his
age, wrote to Schiller from Frankfort of the journalistic spirit of
cities and its relation to poetry:

It seems to me very remarkable how things stand with the
people of a large city. They live in a constant delirium of
getting and consuming, and the thing we call atmosphere can
neither be brought to their attention nor communicated to
them. All recreations, even the theater, must be mere
distractions; and the great weakness of the reading public
for newspapers and romances comes just from the fact that
the former always, and the latter generally, brings
distraction into the distraction. Indeed, I believe that I
have noticed a sort of dislike of poetic productions--or at
least in so far as they _are_ poetic--which seems to me to
follow quite naturally from these very causes. Poetry
requires, yes, it absolutely commands, concentration. It
isolates man against his own will. It forces itself upon him
again and again; and is as uncomfortable a possession as a
too constant mistress.

If this reporter's attitude of mind was so rampant in cultivated urban
Germany a century ago as to induce "a sort of dislike of poetic
productions," what sort of dislike of them must it not be inducing
to-day? For the appreciation of poetry cannot live under the same
roof with the journalistic spirit. The art needs long, quiet vistas
backward and forward, such as are to be had daily on one of those
"lone heaths" where Hazlitt used to love to stalk ideas, but such as
are not to be met with in Times Square or the Subway.

The joyful side of the situation is that this need is being met. A few
years ago the city dwellers of America began to return to nature. The
movement spread until every one who could afford it, habitually fled
from the city for as long a summer outing as possible. More and more
people learned the delightful sport of turning an abandoned farm into
a year-round country estate. The man who was tied to a city office
formed the commuting habit, thus keeping his wife and children
permanently away from the wear and tear of town. The suburban area was
immensely increased by the rapid spread of motori