ABSTRACT
William JAMES has said that there is very little difference between men but what there is is of great importance. This is true of cities as of men. In going from one to another everything presents very much the same appearance; streets and public buildings, theatres, railway stations, factory chimneys and church steeples, buses, taxis and trains, shops and department stores, museums and parks, smoke overhead, dust and noise below. But one can't be long in any of them without finding out differences of terrain and climate, of resources and employments, of history and tradition that have stamped themselves on the population and which give each of them a marked individuality of its own. I had been familiar with Glasgow from my childhood and with London for the last twelve years, but Birmingham with all its superficial resemblances was in certain respects something entirely different from either.
