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.
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.
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.