I think of the machine-tender and his wife, who, in a year of ill-health and doctor’s bills for themselves and their two children, took in the young wife of a fellow-worker who had lost his position; tended her when her baby came, cared for mother and child for eight months, till a new job was found.
Of two households, who took in and made happy, the one a broken-down artist who had fallen on evil times in a great city, the other a sour-tempered old working woman, left without kin. The first household have growing-up children, an automobile, horses, all the complexities of well-to-do life in these days, but the tie of old friendship was the one thing considered. The householders in the second case were not even near friends, merely fellow church members, a kind man and wife, left without children, who could not enjoy their warm house while old Hannah was friendless. They tended her as they might have tended their own sister.
Of the young teacher, alone in the world, who, when calamity came to two married friends (a burnt house and office, and desperate illness) took all the savings that were to have gone for three years’ special training, went to them, a three-days’ railroad journey, brought them home, and bore all the household expenses of the young couple, and of their baby’s coming, until new work was found.
The cooking and housework for four persons, (together with a heavy amount of neighborhood work,) would seem enough for even a very capable and kind pair of hands. Well, one friend, in addition to this, for two years cooked and carried in all the meals for a neighbor (a good many doors away), a crippled girl, a prey, heretofore, to torturing dyspepsia. There was no chance of saving the girl’s life, she had a fatal complaint, but thanks to this simple ministry, her last two years were free from pain, and she was as happy a creature as could well be.
These and like cases crowd to one’s mind, till the memories of the town ring like a chime of bells.
I remember how troubled we were about one neighbor, a gentle, sweet lady, left the last of a large and affectionate family circle; how we dreaded the loneliness for her. We need not have been troubled. There was a place for her at every hearth in the neighborhood, and when the long last illness set in, kind, pitiful hands of neighbors were close about, soothing and tending her. One younger friend, like a daughter, never left her, day after day. Her own people were all gone before her, her harvest was gathered, there could be no more anguish of parting; and her last years seemed, as one might say, carried forward on a sunny river of friendship.
III
People from sunnier climates speak sometimes of our lack of community cheer and of festivals; but a temperature of twenty below zero—or even twenty above—does not conduce to dancing on the green; and it may be that the spirit’s light-footedness, like that of the outward person, is hampered by many wrappings. Yet once in a while even we northern people do “break out”; as on Fourth of July, when, in the early morning, the “Antiques and Horribles,” masked and painted, ride, grinning, through the streets.
After a football victory, our High School boys, like boys everywhere, break out in unorganized revel. They caper about in night-shirts put on over their clothes, or in their mother’s and sisters’ skirts, and with the girls as well, they dance down the street in a snake-dance. They light a bonfire in the square, and sing, cheer, and frolic around it. Though they do not know it, it is pure carnival.
The long white months of winter see us all very busy and settled. This is the time of year when solid reading is done, and sheets are hemmed, when our Literary Societies write and read their papers, when we get up plays and tableaux, and the best work is done in the schools. Nobody minds the long evenings, the lamplight beside the open fires is so infinitely cozy; and on moonlight nights, all winter, the long double-runners slip past outside, with joyful laughter and clatter, as the boys and girls—and their elders—take one hill after another in the Mile Coast.