“How lovely stillness and separateness are!” said Rosamond as they sat in the buggy, stopping to enjoy a glimpse of the river on one side, and a flame of burning bushes on the other, against the dark face of a piece of woods that held the curve of road in which they stood, in sheltered quiet.  “How pretty a house would be, up on that knoll.  Do you know things puzzle me a little, Kenneth?  I have almost come to a certain conclusion lately, that people are not meant to live apart, but that it is really everybody’s duty to live in a town, or a village, or in some gathering of human beings together.  Life tends to that, and all the needs and uses of it; and yet,—­it is so sweet in a place like this,—­and however kind and social you may be, it seems once in a while such an escape!  Do you believe in beautiful country places, and in having a little piece of creation all to yourself, if you can get it, or if not what do you suppose all creation is made for?”

“Perhaps just that which you have said, Rose.”  Rosamond has now, what her mother hinted once, somebody to call her “Rose,” with a happy and beautiful privilege.  “Perhaps to escape into.  Not for one, here and there, selfishly, all the time; but for the whole, with fair share and opportunity.  Creation is made very big, you see, and men and women are made without wings, and with very limited hands and feet.  Also with limited lives; that makes the time-question, and the hurry.  There is a suggestion,—­at any rate, a necessity,—­in that.  It brings them within certain spaces, always.  In spite of all the artificial lengthening of railroads and telegraphs, there must still be centres for daily living, intercourse, and need.  People tend to towns; they cannot establish themselves in isolated independence.  Yet packing and stifling are a cruelty and a sin.  I do not believe there ought to be any human being so poor as to be forced to such crowding.  The very way we are going to live at the Horseshoe, seems to me an individual solution of the problem.  It ought to come to pass that our towns should be built—­and if built already, wrongly, thinned out,—­on this principle.  People are coming to learn a little of this, and are opening parks and squares in the great cities, finding that there must be room for bodies and souls to reach out and breathe.  If they could only take hold of some of their swarming-places, where disease and vice are festering, and pull down every second house and turn it into a garden space, I believe they would do more for reform and salvation than all their separate institutions for dealing with misery after it is let grow, can ever effect.”

“O, why can’t they?” cried Rose.  “There is money enough, somewhere.  Why can’t they do it, instead of letting the cities grow horrid, and then running away from it themselves, and buying acres and acres around their country places, for fear somebody should come too near, and the country should begin to grow horrid too?”