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Thirty years ago, in a fortnight of village life together, she would have backed herself to have got a promise of marriage out of the Pope; and she did not believe this to be one of the lost arts among young persons of her sex. Thus Mrs. Yorke had strained every nerve to get the necessary funds to make town-life pleasant to her son, and yet she had not succeeded.
Obviously, the vulgarity of town-life cannot be exorcised by Act of Parliament; there is not indeed the faintest chance that Parliament will recognise such a side to the question at all, since there is naturally no public opinion on this matter.
Just as agriculture is the ultimate basis of human society, so town- life has always been an index of culture and civilization. And the fortunes of town-life have ever depended upon the vicissitudes of trade and commerce. So the reviving commerce of the later middle ages between Europe and the East meant the growth of cities and betokened an advance in civilization.
Just as centuries ago it was no easy thing for the serf to escape into the freedom of town-life, even so to-day there are hindrances laid in the way of county laborers. In considerable parts of all the Gulf States, and especially in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, the Negroes on the plantations in the back-country districts are still held at forced labor practically without wages.
What possible interest could he have in combating this decision so anxiously, almost so imploringly? He renewed his complaints against the melancholy of the sea and the dreariness of the northern winters. He described again and again the brilliant lights and colors of town-life in the South.
Eclogues he called them, and meant to have published them by subscription. I remember some of his verses, if you want to hear them. The old man had a great deal to say about "aestivation," as he called it, in opposition, as one might say, to hibernation. Intramural aestivation, or town-life in summer, he would say, is a peculiar form of suspended existence, or semi-asphyxia.
At night respectable town-life was practically at a standstill: the gates were shut; the curfew sounded; no street-lamps dispelled the darkness, except possibly an occasional lantern which an altruistic or festive townsman might hang in his front-window; and no efficient police-force existed merely a handful of townsmen were drafted from time to time as "watchmen" to preserve order, and the "night watch" was famed rather for its ability to sleep or to roister than to protect life or purse.
As we thus cannot avoid entering into the manifold complexities of town-life throughout the world and history, we must carry along with us the means of unravelling these; hence the value of this simple but precise nomenclature and its regular schematic use.
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