Sharon's Choice
Under Providence, a man may achieve the making of many things—ships, books, fortunes, himself even, quite often enough to encourage others; but let him beware of creating a town. Towns mostly happen. No real-estate operator decided that Rome should be. Sharon was an intended town; a one man's piece of deliberate manufacture; his whim, his pet, his monument, his device for immortally continuing above ground. He planned its avenues, gave it his middle name, fed it with his railroad. But he had reckoned without the inhabitants (to say nothing of nature), and one day they displeased him. Whenever you wish, you can see Sharon and what it has come to as I saw it when, as a visitor without local prejudices, they asked me to serve with the telegraph-operator and the ticket-agent and the hotel-manager on the literary committee of judges at the school festival. There would be a stage, and flags, and elocution, and parents assembled, and afterwards ice-cream with strawberries from El Paso.
“Have you ever awarded prizes for school speaking?” inquired the telegraph-operator, Stuart.
“Yes,” I told him. “At Concord in New Hampshire.”
“Ever have a chat afterwards with a mother whose girl did not get the prize?”
“It was boys,” I replied. “And parents had no say in it.”
“It's boys and girls in Sharon,” said he. “Parents have no say in it here, either. But that don't seem to occur to them at the moment. We'll all stick together, of course.”
“I think I had best resign.” said I. “You would find me no hand at pacifying a mother.”
“There are fathers also,” said Stuart. “But individual parents are small trouble compared with a big split in public opinion. We've missed that so far, though.”
“Then why have judges? Why not a popular vote?” I inquired.