In view of the obvious evils suburbanism has brought about in the English metropolis, it might have been expected that the English provincial cities would have done their best to avoid similar troubles in their own areas. So far from this being the case, however, the craze for suburbanism is making itself apparent wherever one turns. City and borough councils lead the way by erecting, at the public expense, artisans' and clerks' dwellings well out of the town. They hold that fresh air, the open country, and cheap railway fares are all that is wanted to make the English citizen's life a perennial joy to him. Yet the dwellings they erect are of the shoddiest and least homelike kind, the fresh-air which is to do the worker and the children so much good is a doubtful quantity, and the cheap railway fares are bragged about without regard to the time taken up in travelling and the hurry and anxiety to catch trains. Suburbanism as a stereotyped and soul-deadening institution is of purely English origin. In no other country in the world do convention and what other people will say so rule the lives of men as they do in England. Suburbanism is in many ways the most obvious of the many products of English convention. It is at once an indication of brainlessness, want of intelligence, and incipient decay. Apparently there is to be no limit to it. Outside London new suburbs spring up almost weekly. But their newness brings no changes in its train. Each new suburb is mapped out and built exactly on the lines of the old ones; each is destined for the reception of exactly the same kind of stupid people; each will be the living-ground of generations of people still more stupid. CHAPTER XIV THE MAN-ABOUT-TOWN