The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

The little boys of London town
They run with sticks to knock them down.
And then they run from hedge to hedge
Until they come to London Bridge.
Paul’s steeple is gone, and I do not know at what
date the hedges disappeared between St Paul’s and
London Bridge. It is many centuries since the little
boys of London town could enjoy such pleasures
as this rhyme suggests, but until not so very long
ago the bulk of the population lived in the country.
The towns were not very vast; it was easy to get
out of them, and by no means uncommon to find
gardens attached to many houses in them.
Nowadays there is in England an immense
preponderance of the urban over the rural
population. In America this preponderance is as
yet slight, but it is very rapidly increasing. Cities
like London and New York are so large that it
takes a very long time to get out of them. Those
who live in the city usually have to be content with
a flat, to which, of course, not a square inch of soil
is attached, and in which people of moderate