before he was forty-five. As to the common people, they died like flies: they had no stamina, no power of resisting disease. Town life isn't unhealthy: the art of sanitation did not begin until the towns grew large. Did you ever see an old farm-house? Where did they build them? Always in hollows, in muddy, airless bottoms, to be near water—you understand: near water—and they drained into that water—and they were plague houses all of them.
"Did you ever have to do with a sick farm labourer? Those fellows! Why, they fold their hands and die for a touch of liver. Their life doesn't hold them because it contains no interest. Half their healthy hours are spent in mooning and brooding: they all suffer from dyspepsia because of their abominable diet of cheese and tea. Why, I'd rather attend fifty London street rats with half a lung apiece than one great hulking farm bailiff. Those are the fellows, after all, the London scaramouches, for getting over an illness.
"Don't you see, my dear sir, your problem is to breed disease-resisting men, and you won't do it from men who mope about fields and hedges. No! modern life is a question of towns. Purify them if you can: get rid of smoke and foul air if you can. But breed a race fitted to inhabit them in any case."
That indeed is the problem which is set before London—the apotheosis of modern life. For there is no ignoring the fact that mankind elects to live in crowds. If London can evolve a town type London will be justified of its existence. In these great movements of
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