A Northern Countryside

by Rosalind Richards

CHAPTER XVI—OUR TOWN

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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