My jeremiad against the flat as a home has two clauses; first, that it makes home life practically impossible, and is sending it to decay through the dry-rot of disuse; and, second, that it is causing deterioration of the men and women who inhabit it. These men, under better and happier conditions, might be worthy of the honorable titles of heads of households, husbands, and fathers, men who would work harder, more honestly, and with more heart for the home that was a home and not a mere glorified furnished apartment, a lodging from Monday to Friday. These women in another age might have been the honorable wearers of the old names of wife, mother, and housewife. But to-day-shades of our grandmothers!-to call the modern flat dwelling woman a housewife!

How can you keep house, with the best will in the world, without a cup board? Housekeeping becomes an art indeed, but an art of a different kind to that which our mothers taught us. It is a gamble. The principal rule is to live from hand to mouth, and the art consists in finding the shortest line from shop to mouth. Get your food in the smallest possible quantities, for you have not the power, even if you had the wish, to store. Order by telephone and eat in haste, for are you not always just come back or just going away?

Your grandmother in her leisurely way, keys at her side, going the round of store-rooms with their rich suggestions of forethought and almost loving care, and with their pungent odors of good things to come, and into her dairy larders, cool and airy, where food might be kept fresh and sweet, is a picture of gracious, provident, old-fash ioned womanhood. It is a picture belonging to the days when housekeeping was a serious matter, at once an art and a science to be studied, and its results appraised and approved. It be

longs to the days of the lavendar scented linen chest, packed with the work of years. It belongs to the days that will never return, and perhaps had better not be regretted. To the mistress of the flat this pride of achievement-petty, perhaps, but pardonable-is unknown. How can you take pride in that in which you have no interest? How can you take interest in that in which you have no pride?

The elaborate, many-coursed, unsatisfying dinner which fashion and the epicure demand, is best provided at the restaurant which fashion and the epicure are pleased for the moment to praise. For the scanty, hasty meals which must be had in the flat the mistress must reverse the old household rule that it is more economical to keep the store loaded than depend on daily deliveries.

The flat servants are, like their masters, just coming or just going. Why not? That is the atmosphere of the flat. Why should a servant attempt to make a home out of a cupboard-bedroom looking into a well, and opening out of the kitchen?

The flat is so easily managed, so convenient, such a labor-saving contrivance, everything in fact but a home!

It is perhaps necessary to interpolate. in self-defence, that good housekeepers and good home-makers are not synonymous. There are numberless varieties of excellent housekeepers who have no ideas or qualities for making a home. There are women who worry and women who fuss; women who fill their houses with knick-knacks and then sacrifice themselves and everyone in the house on an altar set up to worship the precious possessions; women who keep servants and then do their work; women who are so busy giving their husbands and children food that they have no leisure to give them companionship; one-sided women of every description, who may nevertheless be

good housekeepers. The woman who aspires to be a home-maker must be many-sided.

But flat life is gradually destroying those qualities in man and woman which are not called into play. The tendency to reduce life to the simple proposition-"you press the button and we do the work"-is not pure gain to the one who presses the button. The leisure which results becomes, not a hardly won, precious possession, but empty hours to be filled by strenuous efforts after amusement, morbid imaginings or undisciplined longings. There is no emollient like daily duties, no philosophy so enlightening as hard work, no chain so strong as the clasp of baby fingers, no magnetism so pow. erful as love. And it is at bottom love which makes a home.

But in a flat there is certainly no room for babies. Why, there would be hardly room to keep wrapped away in your little memory-box your baby's first shoe, or the curl that was cut off when to your sorrow he was slipping into boyhood. "A baby rising three years and kitten rising three months" is everywhere a hopeless ideal, for babies and kittens have a horrid trick of growing bigger. But in a flat both babies and kittens are out of place. There can be no sunuy nurseries, no garden, bowever small, no real privacy, no big lumber room, where the boys can kick a ball or the girls make a mess on a wet day. And there are neighbors to right of them, neighbors to left of them, neighbors above and neighbors below them, who volley and thunder if the silence is broken, and others who have pianos and friends who, like Sir Toby Belch, go to bed early. Add to this solid block of neighbors, each with his own pet aversion or idiosyncrasy, a crying baby, two babies, or a boy or two. No! we cannot add to this any babies at all. There is no accommodation for them in flats. Some work

men's flats, with their high, wide balconies, and a common playground, making fresh air possible, do seem to have been constructed with some vague idea that children have a claim on their elders for the common rights of air and space. But the architect of the elegant, convenient, high-class flat makes no such concessions to the poor-rich middle class.

Amongst the other lost arts-lost in the deep wells of the flat-is the gentle art of hospitality, which must not be confused with entertaining. Of entertaining there is too much. for it is so simple and impersonal, it is part of the labor-saving paraphernalia. If you decide to entertain in your flat you telephone to the nearest of the many agen cies existing for the purpose, and leave everything in their hands. They will supply your entire evening-food, servants, entertainment, flowers, taste, and. if necessary, guests. Your pennies, or rather pounds, pour down the slot; the machine supplies the rest. This is not hospitality, but machine-made entertaining; and, truth to tell, affords small entertainment to the guests and none to the hosts. There are even simpler methods of offering the quid pro quo for value received open to the flat dweller who decides not to have the small worry of asking his guests to his house at all. The restaurant is always available with an elaborate dinner, and the latest fancy in entremets, and then on to the theatre maybe; afterwards, there is only the bill to pay. It is all so simple and so impersonal.

But how Miss Betty Barker's party shines in comparison. What an event was the night itself to hostess and guests; what conversation is provided for weeks of evenings, and what memories! There was the joy of achievement for the hostess, or rather hostesses, for was not the faithful maid who had worked hard with real joy and pride for the honor of the house a

finally died, and was buried in flatland" runs the inscription.

If,

Hospitality costs more than money. it costs effort (carefully veiled, that is the art), and a giving out of individuality, fore-thought, and, above all, a selfless desire to please, not to shine. This in part might be possible in the flat, but a candid dweller in flatland would be bound to confess that it is not common. Indeed, the spirit of the age is largely responsible for the decadence of hospitality everywhere. The giving or receiving of the simple hospitality of the home is out of date. Competition in the splendor of the entertainments, which is taking its place, is killing it.

The kindly "open house" hospitality too, which even the dweller in the humblest of real homes is glad to offer -a bed whenever you like to come-is impossible in flatland. So many of the elegant modern blocks are considered roomy with three small bedrooms, that to take "a stranger within the gates" is an impossibility to a flatland family. The pleasure of asking your friends into the life of your home, so that you may know and be known as you are, the best and the worst of you, is denied to the dwellers in flats. The joy of taking in those who need the shelter of a home, or of giving a change of thought and scene to the friend or relation from the country, is unknown to those who have not a home themselves. The tombstone of hospitality is being erected-"a long time languishing, LIVING AGE.

VOL. XLI.

2175

The privilege of being ill in comfort is another of the losses incurred by those who dwell with neighbors and noises all around and above them. indeed, there is any room left to be ill in! Presumably the flat dweller, between the time of just coming back and just going off, is so well equipped with every modern convenience that

from the scheme of life.

If the flat has no room for friends or flower gardens, sickness, or kittens, boys or babies, it has certainly no place for memories. Who in leaving a flat/ turns round and looks back with a wistful heart at the odd corners full of sweet memories? For one reason, there are no odd corners; there are only sharp angles that bark your shins. There is no possibility of the memory of your mother waiting eagerly at the door watching as you run up the garden home again from school. Where is the deep broad seat, half-way up the stairs, where, behind the curtains and looking over the trees, you heard or told the old new tale of love? Wherever there is human life there are the eternities-Love, Life, and Death. "And Love can climb that stony stair" (to parody Mr. Austin Dobson) in any modern flat. But surely there never were surroundings less congenial to the verities than a block of flats. bt has no atmosphere either moral or physical-only machine-made conven

iences.

We English were proverbially a nation of homes, and the British matron, though occasionally she becomes confused with Mrs. Grundy, still remains a dim picture, which men respect, of gracious womanhood doing a woman's work in a womanly way, caring for her household, and moving among her sons and daughters as their friend. That same British matron has found time

in that dim picture to take her share of the world burdens outside her home. The homeless, the friendless, and the sorrowful have not been less be friended because there was a home that had to come first. She has worked so well that her reward has been more work in a wider sphere--and she has asked for nothing better. Have Eliza. beth Fry and Queen Victoria and Mrs. Booth and a whole gallery of other women been less world workers because they were also home workers? Try and bring from out of the normal atmosphere of the flat if you can some great man or woman who has looked at life and understood it. The thing is incongruous. Individuality is stifled. The vision becomes blurred and the perspective false.

The children who do find their way into flatland have all the chances against them. Cramped for air and space, robbed of the discipline of giveand-take in a family, cheated of the memories of home which make men pure and women strong, they do not start fairly, and the nation which is looking to them as its future rulers and citizens will be disappointed. It is its home life which has been not the least factor in the making of England. And if home life-with all that it means. and might mean-disappears, we may become rich, we shall not become great. Socialism proposes to rob us of our homes and give us instead readymade citizens. It proposes, or did propose in a pretty book of fantasies called the Fabian Essays, published many years ago, to take our children from us and bring them up in State nurseries. This, of course, may happen for our The Fortnightly Review.

sins, but when it does, let the nation look elsewhere for its great men and

women.

To save time by simplifying lifenot by living the simple life, which is much too complicated a matter-is indeed worth while. To distinguish between the essential and non-essential of domestic life that you may spend the surplus of your time in adding to the world's happiness or subtracting something of its burden or increasing the sum of its knowledge is a characteristic of mind marking out the great of both sexes. But that is not the simplification of the typical mistress of the flat. She has simplified life by dropping out the essentials of life. She has reduced it to a machine-made article in which she merely pulls the lever. And why this effort at reducing duties to a vanishing point? Is it not that she can devote herself to chasing pleasures and to catching the thrill of excitement which her jaded taste finds necessary? The bridge table is the substitute for the cradle. The winning of other people's money is the excitement which takes the place of the joy of achievement. The home is an interruption to the game; duties interfere with pleasures and must be curtailed. This is the working hypothesis of the decadent of both sexes. "What is the chief end of man?" To which the shortest catechism makes answer-"To shuffle out of his duties and be amused."

Life robbed of its duties is robbed of its pleasures. But that is a secret you learn in homes, and homes are growing

scarcer.

Annie Groser Hurd.

October 30, 1858, the famous Proclamation of Queen Victoria, transferring the government of India from the East India Company to the Crown, was read in all the great cities of India; and October 30, 1908, Lord Minto read at Jodhpur a new Proclamation from the first Emperor who has ever exercised undivided control over the whole Indian peninsula. The Queen's Proclamation was issued at a momentous period in the history of British rule. The embers of the Great Revolt were still smouldering, and Michel's troopers were still chasing Tantia Topi amid the wilds of Central India. The angry passions that had blazed forth upon both sides were still visible. Great Britain had subdued the rising, but she had to face the task of constructing a new administration out of the fragments of the old. Into this arena of fierce encounters, and of tragic memories which still were fresh and poignant, came the message of the Queen, breathing a spirit of humanity and forgiveness and peace. "Write it," wrote her Majesty to Lord Derby, "remembering that it is a female Sovereign who speaks to more than 100,000,000 of Eastern people on assuming the direct government over them after a bloody civil war. . . . Such a document should breathe feelings of generosity, benevolence, and religious feeling. pointing out the privileges which the Indians will receive in being placed on an equality with the subjects of the British Crown, and the prosperity following in the train of civilization." In that spirit the Proclamation was written; in that spirit, despite many accusations to the contrary, it has been scrupulously observed. The British in India have no reason to fear the verdict of posterity upon the half-century

that has elapsed since the control of the Company was replaced by that of the Government of India as we know it to-day.

The changes which have been wrought in the Indian Empire during the last 50 years are very great. The accessions of territory represent an enormous area. Upper Burma, Baluchistan, and the Dooars have passed under our control. Our political frontier has been extended to the borders of Afghanistan and the high Pamirs on the one hand, and to the upper waters of the Mekong on the other. Our flag has been carried alike to the Roof of the World and to the heart of Indo-China. Exact statistics of the area and population owning our sway in 1858 are lacking. No accurate estimates were made until 1872, but in that year the area of the Indian Empire was calculated at 1,450,744 square miles, with a population of 239 millions. To-day it is estimated at 1,766,597 square miles, with a population of 2941⁄2 millions. That is about one-fifth of the population of the whole world. It is not always realized that two-fifths of this vast territory is still under native rule; and these figures do not include either the tribal territory between our administrative frontier and the Durand line on the north-west, which is under our political control, or the countries of Afghanistan and Nepal, which are to a considerable extent under our influence.

The material development of India under the Crown has been equally impressive. When the Queen's Proclamation was read, John Bright said in Parliament that there were more "travelable" roads in a single English county than in the whole of India. The Grand Trunk Road only reached