Page:Our Common Land (and other short essays).djvu/123

 touch, or lead, or strengthen, by which in time he might become the man he was meant to be. Each is a child of God, meant by him for some good thing. Put him in a new colony with wood, or heath, or prairie round him, or even lead him into the quiet of your own study, and you will begin to see what is in the man. It is this dreadful crowding of him with hundreds more, this hustling, jostling, restless, struggling, noisy, tearing existence, which makes him seem to himself or you so useless, which makes him be so little what he might be. Can you give him a little pause, a little more room, especially this sultry summer afternoon?

I think you may. There are, all over London, little spots unbuilt over, still strangely preserved among the sea of houses—our graveyards. They are capable of being made into beautiful out-door sitting-rooms. They should be planted with trees, creepers should be trained up their walls, seats should be placed