Note 141 — Chapter IV · CITIES AND PEOPLES (A) THE SOUL OF THE CITY

The phenomenon is perhaps too well known in our days to need exemplification. But it is worth while recalling that the usual form of disgrace for a minister or courtier of the seventeenth or eighteenth century was to be commanded to “retire to his estates,” and that a student expelled from the universities is said to be “rusticated.” Since this volume was written, a remarkable proof of the reality of this spiritual indrawing by the Megalopolis has been given by the swift spread of radio broadcasting over the West-European and American world. For the country-dweller, radio reception means intimate touch with the news, the thought, and the entertainment of the great city, and relieves the grievance of “isolation” that the older country-folk would never have felt as a grievance at all.—Tr.