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That fashion will flit away from its present haunts there can be little doubt; the city below the Park is sure to be given up to business, and even the fine frontage on that green space will sooner or later be occupied by hotels, if not stores; and he who builds with any belief in the permanency of his surroundings must indeed be of a hopeful disposition.

A good lady occupying a delightful corner on this same avenue, opposite a one-story florist’s shop, said:

“I shall remain here until they build across the way; then I suppose I shall have to move.”

So after all the man who is contented to live in a future apartment house, may not be so very far wrong.

A case of the opposite kind is that of a great millionaire, who, dying, left his house and its collections to his eldest son and his grandson after him, on the condition that they should continue to live in it.

Here was an attempt to keep together a home with its memories and associations. What has been the result? The street that was a charming centre for residences twenty years ago has become a “slum;” the unfortunate heirs find themselves with a house on their hands that they cannot live in and are forbidden to rent or sell. As a final result the will must in all probability be broken and the matter ended.

Of course the reason for a great deal of this is the phenomenal growth of our larger cities. Hundreds of families who would gladly remain in their old homes are fairly pushed out of them by the growth of business.

Everything has its limits and a time must come when our cities will cease to expand or when centres will be formed as in London or Paris, where generations may succeed each other in the same homes. So far, I see no indications of any such crystallization in this our big city; we seem to be condemned like the “Wandering Jew” or poor little “Joe” to be perpetually “moving on.”

At a dinner of young people not long ago a Frenchman visiting our country, expressed his surprise on hearing a girl speak of “not remembering the house she was born in.” Piqued by his manner the young lady answered:

“We are twenty-four at this table. I do not believe there is one person here living in the house in which he or she was born.” This assertion raised a murmur of dissent around the table; on a census being taken it proved, however, to be true.

How can one expect, under circumstances like these, to find any great respect among young people for home life or the conservative side of existence? They are born as it were on the wing, and on the wing will they live.

The conditions of life in this country, although contributing largely to such a state of affairs, must not be held, however, entirely responsible. Underlying our civilization and culture, there is still strong in us a wild nomadic strain inherited from a thousand generations of wandering ancestors, which breaks out so soon as man is freed from the restraint incumbent on bread-winning for his family. The moment there is wealth or even a modest income insured, comes the inclination to cut loose from the dull routine of business and duty, returning instinctively to the migratory habits of primitive man.

We are not the only nation that has given itself up to globe-trotting; it is strong in the English, in spite of their conservative education, and it is surprising to see the number of formerly stay-at-home French and Germans one meets wandering in foreign lands.

In 1855, a Londoner advertised the plan he had conceived of taking some people over to visit the International Exhibition in Paris. For a fixed sum paid in advance he offered to provide everything and act as courier to the party, and succeeded with the greatest difficulty in getting together ten people. From this modest beginning has grown the vast undertaking that to-day covers the globe with tourists, from the frozen seas where they “do” the midnight sun, to the deserts three thousand miles up the Nile.