But the remark rankled and in the end set this and that motive to work in my mind until my brain and heart became fallow ground for the cultivation of another sort of relationship than that of city folk and native, buyer and seller, employer and employed, or even giver and receiver. In the end we learned to be neighbors—he and I—not because his ground adjoined mine, but because we both began to feel a common civic interest in the same village and in the same country side, and because in a very particular and picturesque sense we both shared in an enterprise from which we both derived comfort and pleasure. The change in me was greater than the change in him for he had always been interested in the village life apart from his property, and apart from his comfort, and during all the year. The bond that brought us together was not the church, nor the library, nor the base-ball field—all donations in times past of the summer people to the natives, but it was the Neighborhood House, a donation from the country people and the summer people alike, not to any particular class but to all the dwellers in that mountain valley.
Of course, I realize that the particular Neighborhood House, which fits so well the need of our valley, might not do for just any valley. For instance, our valley in the Adirondacks has a scattered population of nearly a thousand people with two villages about five miles apart, and several little settlements here and there among the hills. In the larger village there are perhaps one hundred children in the school. The nearest hospital lies twenty-four miles across a mountain road, and several hours by boat across Lake Champlain at Burlington, Vt. An infirmary that could be used by the natives for long illnesses, and by the city cottagers for emergency operations was vitally needed; so our Neighborhood House has a sunny airy infirmary and a perfectly equipped little operating room.
Our village and the country people and the lumber camps back in the mountains can only depend on the services of two physicians, one of them an old and feeble man. To supplement their visits and for emergency calls for the summer visitors a district nurse was needed, so a bed-room, bath-room, and pleasant sitting-room for such a nurse were planned in the Neighborhood house to connect with the infirmary. To supplement the somewhat limited primary grades in the village schools and to provide occupation for restless little city children, a summer kindergarten had been established and proved most successful, so on the lower floor of the Neighborhood House a large, many-windowed room was set apart to be used, not only for this purpose, but for adult classes in domestic science, sewing, embroidery and dancing. There was no proper room in the village for fairs, church suppers, glee clubs, rehearsals, informal village meetings, etc. There was added, therefore, to this large room a kitchen to be used in connection with it for such entertainments and for cooking classes. There had been a successful men's club in the village for years, but the women and girls had no common meeting place and indeed no real center of interest outside their homes. A woman's club room therefore was made an important part of our Neighborhood House. It has an open fireplace, a store closet and cupboards, a writing table, tea and game tables, comfortable chairs, and a pretty color scheme, with prints and water colors on the wall, oriental rugs on the hardwood floors, pleasant chintzes, books, and flower bowls.
CORNER OF WOMEN'S CLUB
Though the village women had been long accustomed to make extra pin-money by selling eggs, maple sugar, balsam pillows, bread and cake, and rag-carpet rugs, there has been no store where these things could be ordered. We set apart one room in our Neighborhood House, therefore, for a Village Exchange, which was open for three months in the summer. During the winter months this pleasant little room was used by the boys for a game room. There was no hotel or even boarding house in the village for transient guests, which remained open throughout the winter; so two guest rooms were set aside in our Neighborhood House to be used by the strangers, lecturers, clergymen, visiting surgeons, and city visitors who might pass that way during the late autumn and the winter months.
Neither the village people nor the summer cottagers were well supplied with sick room appliances, and among the poorer citizens of the valley there was even a lack of necessary articles for confinement cases, while crutches, invalid chairs, and wheel chairs were difficult to procure in an emergency by rich and poor alike. So an emergency closet, stocked with such things was set aside for general use in the Neighborhood House. The rooms in the rest of the house were the house dining-room and kitchen, the pantry, cool room, linen and store closet, the stewardess's bed-room, and an up-stairs sleeping porch for the infirmary, and a splendid attic. Outside the house were the wood shed, earth closet, tool shed and ice house, an ample vegetable and fruit garden, a lawn space for croquet and tether ball, a small flower and shrub garden, and wide verandas.
The house was originally a boarding house, and the only additions which had to be made to the original structure were the cellar, summer kitchen and the sleeping porch. The total cost of these additions and of the equipment and alterations including all gifts came to about $3,000. The original purchase price of the property was $2500. The cost of maintaining the house including the salary of the visiting nurse, the wages of the stewardess, and all household expenses, as well as the expenses of the summer school, extra service, etc., amount to about $2,500 yearly. The income derived from patients in the infirmary, transients boarding in the house, and out-patients' fees, exchange dues, etc., amount to about $700 a year.
I suppose in different localities expenses of such an enterprise as the Neighborhood House would be dealt with in a variety of ways. In our valley a number of men and women bought the property and made the fundamental improvements. An association was then formed comprising as many of the citizens of the valley as cared to join. The annual dues for each associate member were fixed at one dollar. To this association the owners of the property leased the house and grounds for a period of several years. The duties of the association were to pay the taxes and maintain the property in good condition, and their privileges were to use the property for the benefit of the members of the association and, as they saw fit, for the general good of the community.
There were three kinds of memberships in the association: