I
The farms become smaller, and string along nearer and nearer each other,
the hills slope more and more sharply, till suddenly, there below them
lies our Town, held round in their embrace, its factory chimneys sending
up blossoms of steam, its host of scattered lights at night a company of
low-dropped stars. There is no visible boundary; but with the first
electric light pole there is a change, and something deeper-rooted than
its convenience and compactness, its theatres and trolleys, makes the
town's life as different as possible from that of the farm districts.
Yet an affectionate relationship maintains itself between the two. Farm
neighbors bring in a little area of unhurried friendliness which clings
around their Concord wagons or pungs; hurrying townsfolk, stopping to
greet them, relax their tension and an exchange of jokes and chaff
begins. Leisurely, ample farm women settle down in our Rest Room for
friendly talk and laughter, and hot coffee or tea.
Our dearest Town! We have perhaps some of the faults of all northern
places. We, at least we women, are sad _Marthas_, careful and troubled,
including house-cleaning with seed-time and harvest among the things
ordained not to fail, no matter at what cost of peace of mind and
health. We hug each our own fireside; but this is because, for eight
months of the year, the great cold gives us a habit of tension. We enjoy
too little the elixir of our still winter days, and hurry, hurry as we
go, to pop back to our warm hearths as fast as ever we can.
Now and again through the year, the big cities call us with a Siren's
voice.
"My wife and I put in ten days at the Waldorf-Astoria each year, and we
count it good business," says one of our tradesmen, and he speaks for
many. The clustered brilliancy at the entrances of the great theatres,
the shop windows, the sense of being _carried_ by the great current of
life, sets our feet and our pulses dancing; but I think it is not quite
so much the stir and gaiety which we sometimes thirst for as the
protecting insulation of the crowd, to draw breath in a little and let
the mind relax. The wall that guards one's citadel of inner privacy
needs, in a small town, to be built of strong stuff; it is subjected to
hard wear. Indeed we share some of the privations of royalty, in that we
lead our whole lives in the public eye. We see each other walk past
every day, greet each other daily in shops and at street corners, and
meet each other's good frocks and company manners at every church supper
and afternoon tea. It takes a nature with Heaven's gift of
unconsciousness to withstand this wear and tear; yet there are plenty of
these among us, people of such quality and fibre that they keep a fine
aloofness and privacy of life, like sanctuary gardens within guardian
hedges.
But if our closeness to each other has these slight drawbacks, it has
advantages that are unspeakably precious. Our neighbors' joys and
troubles are of instant importance to us, each and all. In the city one
can look on while one's neighbor dies or goes bankrupt. Too often, one
cannot help even where one would; here we _must_ help, whether we will
or no! We cannot get away from duties that are so imperative. Our
neighbor's necessities are unescapable, and a certain soldierly quality
comes to us in that we cannot _choose_.
An instinct, whether Puritan or Quaker, runs straight through us, which
at social gatherings draws men and women to the two sides of a room, as
a magnet draws needles. Perhaps it is merely the shyness inherent in
towns of small compass; in all the annals of small places, in Cranford,
in John Galt's villages, the ladies bridle and simper, the gentlemen
"begin for to bash and to blush," in each other's society. Whatever it
is, it narrows and pinches communities, and does sometimes more
far-reaching harm than the mere stiffening-up of parties and gatherings;
it narrows the women's habit of thought, so that children are deprived
of some of the wider outlook of citizenship; and the woman's ministry of
cheering and soothing, which pours itself out without stint to all
_women_ in old age or sorrow or sickness, is too often withheld from the
men, who may be as lonely and troubled, and may be left forlorn and
uncheered. However, this foolish thing vanishes before rich and warm
natures, like snow in a March sun.
I sometimes wish that our latch-strings hung a little more on the
outside. It is easier for us to give a party, with great effort, and our
ancestral china, than to have a friend drop in to share family supper;
yet there is something that makes for strength in this fine privacy of
each family's circle, and no doubt, as our social occasions are
necessarily few, a certain formality is the more a real need. It "keeps
up."
One grave trouble runs through our community, and leaves a black trail.
Drink poisons the lives of too many of our working-men.
The drain to the cities, which robs all small places of part of their
life's blood, touches us nearly; the young wings must be tried, the
young feet take the road. The restless sand is in the shoes, and one out
of perhaps every twenty pairs sold in our street is to take a boy or
girl out to make a new home, far from father and mother.
But this, although it robs us, is also our pride and strength. Many of
the boys and girls who have gone out from among us have become
torch-bearers, and their light shines back to us; and if the town's
veins are drained, it is, by the very means which drain it, made part of
the arterial system of the whole country, and throbs with its heart
beats. The enormous variety of post-marks on our incoming mail tells its
absorbing story.
There is no sameness, even in a small town. Here, as everywhere, the
Creator lays here and there His finger of difference; as if He said,
"Conformity is the law--and non-conformity." Why should one clear-eyed
boy among us have been born with the voice and vision, and the
sorrow-and-reward-full consecration, of high poetry, rather than his
brothers? Why should another, of different bringing-up, among a din of
voices crying down the town's possibilities, have had the wit and
enterprise, yes, and the vision, too, to build up, here, a vigorous
manufactory, whose wares, well planned and well made, now have their
market many States away?
I think of a third boy, the child of a well-read, but not a studious
household, who at ten was laying hands on everything that he could find
to study in the branch of science to which his life was later to be
dedicated. He had the same surroundings as the rest of us, we went to
school and played at Indians together; and now, for years, in a distant
city, his life has led him daily upon voyages of thought, beyond the ken
of those who played with him.
Another boy, our dear naturalist, also lives far away. His able, merry
brothers were the most practical creatures; so was he, too, but in
another way. He turned, a little grave-eyed child, to out-of-doors, as a
duck takes to water, caring for birds and beasts with a pure passion, as
absorbed in watching their ways as were the other boys in games and
food. It was nothing to him to miss a meal, or two, if a turtle's eggs
might be hatching. He had very little to help him, for his father, a
very fine man, a master builder, failed in health early; but he helped
himself. He found countless little out-of-the-way jobs; he mounted trout
or partridges for older friends, caught bait, exchanged specimens
through magazines, etc., to keep himself out of doors, and to buy books
and collecting materials. By the time he was twelve he had a little
taxidermy business; and with the growth of technical skill, the finer
part, the naturalist's seeing eye for infinite difference--the shading of
the moth's wing, the marking of the wren's egg--grew faster yet; and with
it the patient reverent absorption in the whole.
People come to him now for accurate and delicate knowledge. His word
gives the authority which for so long he sought; and, at least once, he
has been sent by his Government to bring back a report of birds and
fishes, and to plant his country's flag on a lone coral island.
The other night we went to a play given by some of the school children.
Their orchestra played with spirit; and from the first we grew absorbed
in watching a little boy who played the bass drum. The bass drum! He
played the snare-drum, the triangle, the cymbals, a set of musical
rattles, and I do not know how many extraordinary things attached to
hand or feet, as well. Our northern music is choked in the sand of
over-business, prisoned by northern stiffness, but shy, stiff, awkward
though it may be, the divine thing is there, as groundwater is present
where there is land; and nothing can keep our children from buying
(generally with their own earnings) instruments of one sort or another,
and picking up lessons.
I know this little boy. His father is a laborer, a slack man, down at
heels, but kind and indulgent. The boy is a chubby little soul, and he
accompanied the showy rag-time as Bach's son might have played his
father's masses, with a serious, reverent absorption, his little
unconscious face lighting up at any prettier change in the rag-time.
They live in a tiny cottage, and are well-fed, but very untidy. As the
humming bird finds honey, this child had somehow picked up odd pennies
to buy, and found time to master, his extraordinary collection of
instruments, and he sat playing as if in Heaven. Surely we had seen yet
another manifestation of the Power, which, together with the bright
fields of golden-rod and daisies, plants also the hidden lily in the
woods.
II
Of the town's politics, the less said the better, but in every matter
outside of their withering realm, I wonder how many other communities
there are in which public spirit is as much a matter of course as
drawing breath, where heart and soul are poured into the town's needs so
royally. Our churches, our Library, our Rest Room, Board of Trade, and
Merchants' Association have been earned by the hardest of hard work,
shoulder to shoulder. Most of our women do their own household work, all
of our men work long hours; but when there is question of a public work
to be done, people will pledge, gravely and with their eyes open, an
amount of work that would fairly stagger persons whose easier lives have
trained their fibres less hardily. I wonder what would be the
equivalent, in dollars and cents, of the gift to one of the town's
undertakings, by a stalwart house-wife (who does all the work for a
family of five) of _every afternoon for three weeks_, and this in
December, when our Town loses its head in a perfect riot of Christmas
present-giving.
What is it in politics, what can it be, which so poisons human
initiative at its well-springs? Here is public work which, we are told,
we must accept (must we?) as a corrupting and corrupt thing; it deadens
and poisons; and almost interlocking with it is work for the same town's
good, done by the same people, which invigorates as if with new breath
and kindles a living fire among us.
The peculiar problem of our town, the bitter, fighting quality of our
politics, is a mystery to ourselves. One condition which presses equally
hard on the whole State: the constant friction, and consequent moral
undermining, of a law constantly evaded: may be in part responsible. But
no doubt our intense, flint-and-steel individualism is the chief factor;
yet this individualism is also the sap, the very life-blood, of the
tree!
(Surely things will be better when the ethics of citizenship is taught
to children as unequivocally as the duty of telling the truth.)
With this citizen's work, goes on a private kindness so beautiful that
one finds one's self without words, uplifted and humbled before it; it
is as if, below the obstructions of our busy lives, there ran a river of
friendship, so strong, so single-purposed, that when the rock above it
is struck by need or adversity, its pure current wells forth and carries
everything before it.
How many times have this or that old person's last days been made
peaceful and tranquil, instead of torn with anxiety, by the hidden
action of "a few friends": (ah, the fine and sweet reticence!); and
these not persons of means, but of slender purses; young men, among
others, with the new cares of marriage and children already heavy upon
them.
Doctor's bills "seen to"; a summer at the seashore, for a drooping young
mother, "arranged for"; the new home cozily furnished, and books and
clothing found, for a burnt-out household; a telephone installed, a year
at college provided for; a girl, not at fault, but in trouble, taken in
and made one of the family; these instances and their like crowd the
town's unwritten annals.
I must not seem to rate our dear Town too highly, or to claim that these
examples are anything out of the common, that they shine brighter than
the countless other unseen stars of the Milky Way of Kindness. I only
stand abashed before a bed-rock quality of friendship, which never wears
out nor tires; which gives and gives again, gravely, yet not counting
the cost, and does not withhold that last sharing of hearth and privacy,
before which so many dwellers in more sophisticated places cannot but
waver.
Have I given too many examples? How can I withhold them!
I think of the machine-tender and his wife, who, in a year of ill-health
and doctor's bills for themselves and their two children, took in the
young wife of a fellow-worker who had lost his position; tended her when
her baby came, cared for mother and child for eight months, till a new
job was found.
Of two households, who took in and made happy, the one a broken-down
artist who had fallen on evil times in a great city, the other a
sour-tempered old working woman, left without kin. The first household
have growing-up children, an automobile, horses, all the complexities of
well-to-do life in these days, but the tie of old friendship was the one
thing considered. The householders in the second case were not even near
friends, merely fellow church members, a kind man and wife, left without
children, who could not enjoy their warm house while old Hannah was
friendless. They tended her as they might have tended their own sister.
Of the young teacher, alone in the world, who, when calamity came to two
married friends (a burnt house and office, and desperate illness) took
_all_ the savings that were to have gone for three years' special
training, went to them, a three-days' railroad journey, brought them
home, and bore all the household expenses of the young couple, and of
their baby's coming, until new work was found.
The cooking and housework for four persons, (together with a heavy
amount of neighborhood work,) would seem enough for even a very capable
and kind pair of hands. Well, one friend, in addition to this, for two
years cooked and carried in _all_ the meals for a neighbor (a good many
doors away), a crippled girl, a prey, heretofore, to torturing
dyspepsia. There was no chance of saving the girl's life, she had a
fatal complaint, but thanks to this simple ministry, her last two years
were free from pain, and she was as happy a creature as could well be.
These and like cases crowd to one's mind, till the memories of the town
ring like a chime of bells.
I remember how troubled we were about one neighbor, a gentle, sweet
lady, left the last of a large and affectionate family circle; how we
dreaded the loneliness for her. We need not have been troubled. There
was a place for her at every hearth in the neighborhood, and when the
long last illness set in, kind, pitiful hands of neighbors were close
about, soothing and tending her. One younger friend, like a daughter,
never left her, day after day. Her own people were all gone before her,
her harvest was gathered, there could be no more anguish of parting; and
her last years seemed, as one might say, carried forward on a sunny
river of friendship.
III
People from sunnier climates speak sometimes of our lack of community
cheer and of festivals; but a temperature of twenty below zero--or even
twenty above--does not conduce to dancing on the green; and it may be
that the spirit's light-footedness, like that of the outward person, is
hampered by many wrappings. Yet once in a while even we northern people
do "break out"; as on Fourth of July, when, in the early morning, the
"Antiques and Horribles," masked and painted, ride, grinning, through
the streets.
After a football victory, our High School boys, like boys everywhere,
break out in unorganized revel. They caper about in night-shirts put on
over their clothes, or in their mother's and sisters' skirts, and with
the girls as well, they dance down the street in a snake-dance. They
light a bonfire in the square, and sing, cheer, and frolic around it.
Though they do not know it, it is pure carnival.
The long white months of winter see us all very busy and settled. This
is the time of year when solid reading is done, and sheets are hemmed,
when our Literary Societies write and read their papers, when we get up
plays and tableaux, and the best work is done in the schools. Nobody
minds the long evenings, the lamplight beside the open fires is so
infinitely cozy; and on moonlight nights, all winter, the long
double-runners slip past outside, with joyful laughter and clatter, as
the boys and girls--and their elders--take one hill after another in the
Mile Coast.
With the breaking-up of the ice, all our settled order breaks up, too,
in the tremendous effort of Spring Cleaning. It is as chaotic within the
house as without. The furniture is huddled in the middle of the room,
swathed in sheets. The master of the house mourns and seeks, like a bird
robbed of its nest. We live in aprons and sweeping caps, and in mock
despair. The painter will not come; the step-ladder is broken; the
spare-room matting is too worn to be put down again; but every dimmest
corner of the attic, every picture and molding, every fragment of
put-away china, is shining and polished before the weary wives will take
rest.
With the first warm-scented May nights, the children's bedtime becomes
an indefinite hour. They are all out after dusk, like flights of
chimney-swallows. They run and race down the streets, they don't know
why, and frolic like moths about the electric-light poles.
Memorial Day, with its grave celebration, renews our citizenship. The
children are in the fields almost at sunrise, gathering scarlet
columbines in the hill crannies, yellow dog-tooth violets, buttercups in
the tall wet grass, stripping their mothers' gardens of their brilliant
blaze of tulips, bending down the heavy, dewy heads of white and purple
lilacs. The matrons meet early at Grand Army Hall, and tie up and trim
bouquets and baskets busily till noon. The talk is sober, but cheerful,
and there is a realization of harvest-home and achievement, rather than
sadness. The little sacred procession marches past, to the sound of
music that is more elating than mournful. Later, after the marching, the
tired men find hot coffee and sandwiches ready for them.
With summer, inconsequence and irresponsibility steal happily over the
town. Even in the shops and factories the work is not the same, for
employers and employees have become easy-going, and the business streets
look contentedly drowsy. Bricks and paving stones cannot keep out the
wafts of summer fragrance, and with them an ease and gayety, a _joie de
vivre_, diffuse themselves, which are astonishing after our winter
soberness. Our night-lunch carts, popcorn, and pink lemonade booths,
with their little flaring lights, are ugly, if compared, for instance,
to kindred things in Italy, but they manifest the same spirit. The
coming of a circus shows this feeling at its height, but it does not
need a circus to bring it out; and the Merry-go-round on one of our
wharves toots its gay little whistle all summer. Music, sometimes queer
and naive in expression, comes stealing out through the town. Our music
is never organized, but the strains of brass or string quartettes or a
small band, or of a little part singing, are heard of an evening.
Everybody who can manage it goes down to the sea, if but for one day,
and the small excursion steamer is crowded on her daily trips to "The
Islands."
"It takes from trade," remarks I. Scanlon, the teamster, "but you've
only got one life to live. At a time!" he adds reverently; and he and
his wife and six children travel down to a much-be-cottaged island, set
up their tent on the beach, and for a delicious, barefoot fortnight live
on fish of their own catching, and potatoes brought with them from home.
We almost live on our lawns, and neighbors stray across to each other's
piazzas for friendly talk, friendly silence, all through the warm summer
evenings.
By October every string needs tautening. The still, keen weather takes
matters into its own hands, and we are brought back strictly to work.
Meetings are held, committees appointed, plans made for the winter's
tasks, and soon each group is hard at it, for this and that missionary
barrel, this and that campaign; and at Thanksgiving the matrons meet
again at Grand Army Hall, to apportion and send out the Thanksgiving
Dinner. It is a privilege to be with the kind, able women, to watch
their capable hands, their shortcuts to the heart of the matter in
question, their easy authority, their large friendliness; in more cases
than not, their distinction of bearing as well.
Thanksgiving once over, the pace quickens. Each church has its yearly
sale and supper at hand, for which months of faithful work have been
preparing, and these once worked off, the whole town, as I have said,
loses its head in a perfect fever of giving. What does anything matter
but happiness? Christmas is coming! Every man, woman, and child is a
hurrying Santa Claus. The first snow brings its strange hush, its
strange sheltering pureness, and the sleigh-bells begin once more to
jingle all about. During Christmas week hundreds of strings of colored
lights are hung across the business streets. Wreaths and garlands of
fragrant balsam fir, the very breath and expression of our countryside,
are hung everywhere, over shop windows and doorways, in every house
window, and on quiet mounds in the churchyard and cemetery. The
solemnity of the great festival, which is our Christmas, our All Saints'
and All Souls' in one, folds round us.
The churches are all dark and sweet, like rich nests, with their heavy
fir garlands, lit up by candles. Pews that may be scantily filled at
most times are crowded to-night, for here are the boys and girls,
thronging home from business and college. Here are the three tall boys
of one household, whom we have not seen for a long time, and there are
four others. Here are girls home from boarding-school, rosy and sweet,
blossomed into full maidenhood, bringing a whiff of the city in their
furs and well-cut frocks. There is the only son of one family, who left
home a stripling, now back for the first time, a stalwart man, with his
young wife and three children. His little mother cannot see plainly,
through her happy tears; and there, and there, and there again, are
re-united households.
The bells ring out, and after them comes the silver sound of the first
hymn.
Of late, on Christmas evening, the choirs of the different churches have
begun the custom of meeting on the Common, to lead the crowd in hymns,
round the town Christmas Tree. Later they separate and go about singing
to different invalids and shut-ins, and many of the houses are lighted
up.
"Silent Night! Holy Night!"
So, within doors, we neighbors meet in reverent and thankful worship;
while without, the pure snow, the grave trees, the stars, bear their
enduring witness to that of which they, and we and our human worship,
are a part.
Peace and good-will to our town, where it lies sheltered among its
hills. The country rises on each side of it, and stretches peacefully
away to east and west. The valleys gather their waters, the wooded hills
climb to the stars; they wait, guarding in silent bosoms the treasure of
their memories, the secret of their hopes.
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A little book for wayfarers. Compiled by E. V. Lucas.
Some 125 poems from over 60 authors.
"A very charming book from cover to cover."--_Dial._
THE FRIENDLY TOWN
A little book for the urbane, compiled by E. V. Lucas.
Over 200 selections in verse and prose from 100 authors.
"Would have delighted Charles Lamb."--_The Nation._
POEMS FOR TRAVELERS
Compiled by Mary R. J. Dubois. 16mo. Cloth, $1.50; leather, $2.50.
Covers France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and Greece in some
300 poems.
A BOOK OF VERSES FOR CHILDREN
Over 200 poems representing some 80 authors. Compiled by E. V. Lucas.
With decorations by F. D. Bedford. Gift edition, $2.00. Library edition,
$1.00 net.
"We know of no other anthology for children so complete and well
arranged."--_Critic._
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
34 West 33d Street NEW YORK
End of Project Gutenberg's A Northern Countryside, by Rosalind Richards