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!