“Better a week on Broadway than a lifetime on these lonely hills.”
“I’d like to try it and see!” said Jim.
So Jim Hardy, the plain farmer, went to New York to visit Brother Bill. He had everything he could call for. Bill lived in a beautiful apartment, and he gave Jim a white card to see and do what he wanted. Bill was too busy to go around much, but Jim made his way. For a couple of days it was fine—then somehow Jim, just like Bill at the old farm, began to grow lonesome and oppressed. Right through the wall of Bill’s apartment house was a family with one child. The janitor told him the child was sick, so Jim knocked at the door to sympathize with the neighbors. They froze him with a few words and got rid of him. He saw a man on the street and stopped to converse with him. “Get out!” said the stranger. “You can’t bunco me.” Day after day Jim Hardy, the farmer, saw the fierce, selfish struggle for life in the big city. The great buildings, the theaters, Broadway at night—they were all splendid, but behind and under them lay the meanness, the selfish spirit, the lack of neighborly feeling, which galled the farmer to the heart. On the third night Bill took his brother to a great reception. Just as they walked into the brilliant room Jim glanced from the window and saw a policeman throw a weak and sickly man out of a public room where he was trying to get warm.
“What did I tell you, Jim?” said Bill. “Isn’t this worth a year on your old hills?” And Jim could only think of one thing to say:
“Bill, old fellow, I don’t see how you can live in such a God-forsaken place!”
What do you make of it? One brother thinks God has forsaken the country, while the other says He has forsaken the city! To me they prove that God is everywhere. Some may not find Him, since they look for Him only in things which are agreeable to them, and those are rarely the places in which to look. I think, too, that, like Jim and Bill, all children come into the world with natural tendencies and inclinations which, if worthy, should be encouraged rather than repressed. Both Jim and Bill are needed in American life.
LOUISE
“How is Louise now?”