OUR NEIGHBORS
THE fact that people live next door to you does not make them your
neighbors in the higher and better sense of that word. There may be
nothing in their persons or characters to commend them to you, or
for that matter, to commend you to them. “Neighborhood” in literal
interpretation signifies nearness of vicinity. You have the right to
choose your associates and to elect your friends.
Presuming on this truth, dwellers in cities are prone to vaunt their
ignorance of, and indifference to, those who live in the same street,
block and apartment-house with themselves. If newly come to what is a
kingdom by comparison with their former estate, they make a point of
seeking society elsewhere than among residents of their neighborhood.
“Let us be genteel or die!” says Dickens of Mrs. Fielding’s struggles
to eat dinner with gloves on. “Let us be exclusive or cease to live!”
says Mrs. Upstart, and refuses to learn the names of her neighbors on
the right and left.
One of the hall-marks of the thoroughbred is his daily application of
the maxim, “Live and let live.” His social standing is so firm that a
jostle, or even a push from a vulgarian who chances to pass his way,
can not disturb him. When the mongrel cur bayed at the moon, “the moon
kept on shining.” If he be a gentleman in heart as well as in blood and
name, he has a real interest in people who breathe the same air and
tread the same street with himself—interest as far removed from vulgar
curiosity in other people’s concerns as the gentle courtesy of his
demeanor is removed from the familiar bumptiousness of the forward and
underbred.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: CHANCE SALUTATIONS]
Entering ourselves as learners in his school—and we could not study
manners in a better—we recognize our neighbors as such. If we live
on the same block and meet habitually on the street, a civil bow in
passing, a smile to a child, in chance encounters in market or shop, a
word of salutation, be it only a “Good morning,” or “It is a fine day!”
or, after a few exchanges of this sort—“I hope your family keeps well
in this trying weather”—are tokens of good-will and appreciation of the
fact that we are dwellers in the same world, town and neighborhood.
[Sidenote: COURTEOUS INQUIRIES]
None of these minute courtesies which you owe to yourself and to
your neighbor lays on you any obligation to call, or to invite her to
call on you. Failure to comprehend this social by-law often causes
heart-burnings and downright resentment. You may thus meet and greet a
woman living near you every day for twenty years, and if some stronger
bond than the accident of proximity does not draw you together, you may
know nothing more of her than her name and address at the end of that
time—perhaps the address alone. Unless, indeed, casualty in the way of
fire, personal injury or severe illness, makes expedient—and to the
humane such expediency is an obligation—further recognition of the tie
of neighborhood. In either of the cases indicated, send to ask after
the health of the sufferer, and if you can be of service. If there be
a death in the house, a civil inquiry to the same effect and a card of
sympathy will “commit” you to nothing.
We are working now on the assumption that each of us has a sincere
desire to brighten the pathway of others, to make this hard business
of daily living more tolerable. Of all the passive endurances of life,
strangerhood is one of the hardest to the sensitive spirit. Your
neighbor’s heart is lighter because you show that you are aware of her
existence and, in some sort, recognize her identity. She may not be
your congener. Your bow and smile remind her that you are her fellow
human being. Stranger
ships meeting in mid-ocean do not wait to inspect credentials before
exchanging salutes.
* * * * *
If your neighbor be an acquaintance whom you esteem, do not let her be
in doubt on this point.
[Sidenote: IN PLANTATION DAYS]
In ante-bellum days at the South, neighborhood was a powerful bond
of sympathy. Miles meant less to them in this respect than so many
squares mean to us now. A system of wireless telegraphy connected
plantations for an area of many miles. Joy or sorrow set the current in
motion from one end to the other. What I have called elsewhere being
“kitchenly-kind,” was comprehended in perfection in that bygone time.
When the house-mother sent a pot of preserves to her neighbor with her
love, and “she would like to know how you all are to-day,” it was the
outward and substantial sign of the inward grace of loving kindness,
and not an intimation that the recipient’s preserve-closet was not so
well-stocked as the giver’s. When opened hamper and unfolded napkin
showed a quarter of lamb, or a steak, or a roll of home-made “sausage
meat,” enough neighborly love garnished the gift to make it beautiful.
Out-of-fashion nowadays?
“’Tis true: ’tis true ’tis pity;
And pity ’tis ’tis true.”
[Sidenote: THE BEST PEOPLE]
Enough of the old-time spirit lives among our really “best people”
to justify the “kitchenly-kind” in proffering gifts that presuppose
personal liking and active desire to please a neighbor. A cake
compounded by yourself; a plate of home-made rolls taken from your own
table; a dainty fancy dish of sweets of home-manufacture, express more
of the “real thing” than a box of confectionery or a basket of flowers
put up by a florist. It is the personal touch that glorifies the gift,
the consciousness that your neighbor thinks enough of you to give of
her time and service for your pleasure. The home-made offering partakes
of her individuality, and appeals to yours.
* * * * *
Neighborliness does not, of necessity, imply familiarity of manner
and speech that may become offensive, or a continuous performance of
visits, calls and “droppings-in” that must inevitably become a bore,
however congenial may be the association. Those friendships last
longest where certain decorous forms are always observed, no matter
how close the mutual affection may be. Mrs. Stowe, in one of her
New England stories, describes the intercourse between two families
as “a sort of undress intimacy.” Reading further, we find that this
dishabille companionship involves visits by way of the back door and at
all sorts of unconventional hours.
[Sidenote: BACK-DOOR VISITING]
Such abandonment of the reserves that etiquette enjoins on every
household is a dangerous experiment. The back porch is for family use.
Your next-door neighbor may not meddle therewith. Personally, I do not
want my own son, or my married daughters, to enter my house through the
kitchen. If you, dear reader, would retain your footing in the house
of the friend best-loved by you, come in by the front door, and never
without announcing your presence as any other visitor would. Steady
persistence in this rule will avoid the chances of divers unpleasant
possibilities. Your hostess—or her husband—or grown son—may be as
much in dishabille as the intimacy which, in your opinion, warrants
you in running in and up, without knock or ring. You may happen on
a love-scene, or a family quarrel, or a girl may be in the hands of
the treasure of a hair-dresser who shampoos her twice a month with
pure water that looks like peroxide of hydrogen, and “restores” the
subject’s dark brown tresses to the guileless flaxen of her forgotten
babyhood; or your clattering heels upon the stairway may break the
touchy old grandmother’s best afternoon nap.
There is but one place on earth where it is safe to make yourself
“perfectly at home,” and that is your own house—or apartment—or
chamber.