We had just finished eating lunch at one of the more quiet hotels of our greatest city. We lingered after the meal for a chat, this being one of the privileges of the place, untroubled by the type of waiter, hungry for tips, who so often at the metropolitan hotels conveys unmistakably the idea that one's departure is expected to follow directly the presentation of his bill. The host was a man of business, famed for his success and his interest in public affairs, and especially generous in giving of his money and time to further movements that attempt the betterment of rural life. He had spent his youth in the open country and had never lost any of the vividness of his first joys. It was this mutual interest in rural problems that had brought host and guest together for a quiet talk."Will you give me your deepest impression of the city as you came into it from the country?" asked the man of business of the student.

"I hardly can claim one impression, there are so many."

"But one must be deeper or at least more consciously so than the others. It is that I want. I'll tell you in return my strongest impression when recently I visited, for the first time in several years, the farm where I was born."

"I suppose the line of thought that captured my mind when I first came into the city tonight is what you want."

"Yes."

"I began to think not of your noise or your hurry, your poverty or your crowds, but of your atmosphere of what I call popular materialism. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Perhaps not."

"I mean I sensed everywhere the emphasis upon the power of money. I suppose it is an experience forced upon the consciousness of everyone who comes into the life of this great city from a small community. It seems as if the city was a monument to the idea that money can do everything, that the getting of money is the only satisfactory purpose of life."

"You must not forget the miser of the small village or the considerable number of city people who do not make business and money-making the chief object of their lives."

"Of course in justice I must remember what you say, for it is true. But you wanted my vivid impression and I give it to you as the feeling that in the city money seems all-powerful. With it you are able to get everything, to do everything. You can command other men and they obey you. You can reach over the ocean and draw luxuries of every kind to you for your pleasure and your comfort. Wherever you go you are invited to spend money. At least it is suggested to you how much you could have to satisfy your wildest dreams, had you only the necessary bank account.

"On the other hand, without money you are like a lost soul in the midst of Paradise. With a little money your life must be spent in miserable tenements, in a dirty, noisy, unsanitary quarter of the city. Your children, perchance, must become familiar with the neighboring prostitute. Disease dogs your steps. Pleasures are few. More income means not merely renting a better tenement, but also changing to a safer and more pleasant neighborhood. And always facing you at every turn, from every show window, even from the posters on the bill boards, are suggestions of what money could do for you if only you had it."

"I see your point, but not for many years have I felt the truth of what you say. I imagine I felt strongly the power of money when I first came to the city. Of late I have taken the matter for granted and thought little of it. Yet you must admit that money is power.""Of course, but not to the degree the city deludes one into thinking. Even in the city there is much money cannot do. In the smaller places, especially in the country, one is impressed with the limitations of money. In normal ways it is not possible to spend great sums of money in the country. You do not find methods of getting rid of your money attracting your attention at every turn. If great wealth is spent, a plan must be worked out and some new enterprise undertaken—for example, a magnificent residence or a fancy farm. In the city no forethought is required to spend great wealth. The opportunity is ever at one's elbow. The difficulty is not to accept the importunate invitations."

"I assume you blame the cities for the widespread materialism which is charged up against modern life?"

"Not altogether. In the country, as you have suggested, we have lovers of money and we have sordid poverty. But I do think that urban life tends to emphasize money-getting and to keep it before the mind in a way that is not natural in the small community. Because of this I regard the cities as the natural strongholds of materialism and I see a danger in the urbanizing movement of modern civilization. I think, therefore, that men like yourself should do everything possible to keep in the public consciousness the splendid idealism that is in the city. I mean such kindly sacrifice as the settlement house. However, I have talked enough. What is your vivid impression as a result of your visit to the place of your boyhood?"

"Well, before I give you that, let me remind you that men like myself get our power to help what you call idealism largely because of our money. I suppose you hold, therefore, that even in our disinterested service we advertise the power of money?"

"Yes, I must confess that your influence is never divorced from your standing as one who has made good in the ways of trade. But what of your country impression?"

"There is no place that still seems so beautiful to me as the place of my childhood. I was born beside a splendid river; and not far from the house, separated from it by stretches of meadowland, was a thick and extensive forest. It seemed as if I had everything ideal for the play of childhood.

"Upon my recent visit I felt as never before the value of what I like to call the freedom of the spirit. It seems as if country environment generously provides what the healthy-minded child most needs—an opportunity for the free play of the fancy. I call it a spiritual preparation for life, but I assume that the scientist would describe it as an experience of the imagination. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, as far as you have gone. I covet, however, a clearer understanding of what you mean."

"I mean what I used to find in Wordsworth's poetry and in the work of our own Whittier. I never read them now, but years ago I did a little. You were country-born yourself, as I remember. Don't you recall how your imagination made rich with meaning the simple pleasures and sports of your early life? I can well remember hours of fishing at a dark curve in the river where the water was black even at noon-day because of the overhanging trees. I think I never caught a fish there, but there was always something about the place that made me think that some day a wonderful catch would be made there. It was a place that enlivened the fancy and it illustrates what I mean. There were many other such breeding-spots for fancy scattered along the miles of river and woodland which I grew to know so well."

"Don't you consider your play of fancy mentally dangerous?"

"No, not when it comes into the mind with the incoming tide of experience. There was plenty of reality. We had our discomforts and our disappointments. We were forced to take into account the causal order of things. But the mind had a chance to add its part to the fact of existence. And so it always needs to be. I have been successful as a man of business in part because of my early use of the gift of imagination. It is bad to have life all imagination, to carry into adult experiences the make-believe of childhood, but it is a miserable and destitute existence for any adult to bring to his work no imagination."

"And you regard your earlier use of imagination as a preparation for your later use?"

"Indeed I do. I also regard it as the best basis for a reasonable spiritual interpretation of life. In addition it furnished pleasures, the memories of which are sweet and wholesome to this day."

"Do city children have no similar opportunity for creating fancy?"

"Perhaps they do, but their imagination is too quickly forced into the hard forms of adult experience. They feel all too soon the meaning of wealth, the punishments of poverty. They dream of more of this or less of that. They covet possession of the things they see from the store windows or in the yards of more fortunate children. The shadow of the money-magic of which you spoke falls too soon for their later good across their path. With the country boy and girl this is not likely to happen. Their experiences are more buoyant, more interpretive, more exploring. Fancy creates and reveals; it does not largely furnish the false pleasures of fictitious possession. This is to me the difference. The city may be the richest environment for the adult. That is a matter of opinion. But I cannot see how anyone can think of it as the best place for the child. I cannot believe that I would have gotten nearly so much of good from my early experiences if I had lived in the city. If I am right, this is another element to add to the great urban problem. If the experience of the city child suffers spiritual privations from the limitations of his environment, must this not show itself in social tendencies? In any case I had a motive in what I have said. You are interested in movements that attempt to enrich the experiences of country boys and girls. That is good, but you must not occupy all of the child's time or interest. Give him freedom to discover his own inner resources, the spiritual union between his cravings and the richness of nature. Don't exile him from nature's paradise by too much adult supervision, organization, or influence. In my day we had too little adult assistance in our games and recreation. I can imagine a condition where the country childhood would suffer from too much."

It was this suggestion that I carried away with me from our conversation.