But, all allowances made, it is perfectly clear that the first group of disruptive factors, such as the restaurant dinner, the week-end, the long and frequent holidays, the motor car, the spread of golf, is inimical to the home idea and, therefore, to the house idea. (Home means house, and does not mean flat, for which see further on.) The home idea is complex; it embraces privacy, possession; it implies a place where one can retreat, be master, be powerful in a small sphere, take off one's boots, be sulky or pleasant, as one likes. It involves, above all, a place where one does not hear the neighbor's piano, or the neighbor's baby, or, with luck, the neighbor's cat; but where, on the other hand, one's own piano, one's own baby, and one's own cat are raised to a high and personal pitch of importance. It involves everything that is individual--one's own stationery block, one's crest, or, if one is not so fortunate, one's monogram upon the plate. If the S.P.C.A. did not intervene, I think one might often see in the front garden a cat branded with a hot iron: "Thomas Jones. His Cat." It is the rallying-point of domestic virtue, the origin of domestic tyranny. It is the place where public opinion cannot see you and where, therefore, you may behave badly. Most wife beaters live in houses; in flats they would be afraid of the opinion of the hall porter. And yet the home is not without its charm and its nobility, for its bricks and mortar enshrine a spirit that is worshiped and for which much may be sacrificed. Cigars have been given up so that the home might have a new coat of paint; amusements, holidays, food sometimes--all these have been sacrificed so that, well railed off from the outside world by a front garden, if possible by a back garden, too--or, still more delightful, far from the next house--a little social cosmos might be maintained. So far has this gone in the north of England that many people who could well afford servants will not have them because, as they say, they cannot bear strangers in the house. And very desirable houses in the suburbs of London, with old, walled gardens, have been given up because it was unbearable to take tea under the eyes of passengers on the top of the motor busses.