and cabs to Waterloo when he was pressed for time.  But it is quite vain to urge such considerations on the average man of business.  He would tell you frankly that nothing would induce him to live in a house within a stone’s-throw of Leicester Square, although it is a far better built and more comfortable house than the gimcrack villa which he rents at Surbiton.  The gain in domestic intercourse would not attract him, for he has long ago lost taste for it; and the privilege of lunching with his family would repel him, for he is deeply suspicious of the virtues of domestic cookery.  Nor, I suppose, would it influence him to tell him that by living in Central London, he could command without inconvenience the full attractions of the town, such as concerts, lectures, theatres, or those special assemblies which are representative of London life; for he desires nothing of the kind.  Considerations of economy might affect him, but with all his skill at figures he seldom has the sense to see that the moiety of income paid yearly to the railway, by himself and his family, goes a long way toward the doubling of his rent.  In short, suburbanism is his fetish; it is the keynote of his poor respectability, and he is not to be diverted from it by any reasons which a sane man would regard as considerable, if not imperative.

The most usual excuse of suburbanism is that it is a good thing for the wife and family of a business man, though it is a bad thing for him.  It is singular that no one seems to recognise the gross selfishness of this plea.  It is like the plea of the vivisectionist, that vivisection is a bad thing for a rabbit, but a very good thing for humanity, since humanity profits by the torture of the rabbit.  But for my part I doubt whether there is any real profit to anybody in suburbanism.  There is a town life, and there is a country life, each of which has peculiar compensations of its own; but suburbanism is a miserable compromise, which like most compromises combines not the qualities but the defects of two antagonisms.  Its worst effect is that it sets up in one family two standards of life, which have nothing in common.  After a while it must happen that there is a serious estrangement of taste, and it is not surprising if this often leads to a much more serious estrangement of affection.  The air of Surbiton may be a little fresher than the air of Bloomsbury, but what does this count for if the atmosphere of the hearth be poisoned?  Moreover, among the Anglo-Saxon peoples women are not encouraged to take any vital interest in the pursuits of their husbands as they are among the Latin races.  I should not be surprised to find that half the women in the London suburbs do not know the precise nature of their husbands’ occupations.  A French woman of the bourgeois class often has a real aptitude for business.  She can manage a shop, keep accounts, take an interest in markets, and in all questions of commercial enterprise she is the confidante, and