CHAPTER XVI—OUR TOWN

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.