Neighborhood Stories

t anybody that’s always treated me like a dog an

her rare and somewhat a

orld,” she said, “and hark at me talking like

n, of little areas, of teasing tasks, of lack of exercise, of that curious mingling which we call social life; but any one who takes seriously our faint feuds or even our narrow judgments does not know and love the Middle Western villages, nor understand that s

ur “Well, you can’t change human nature” as to a recipe, though it does change before our eyes. If it were only that impossible plaques and pillows have given place to hammered brass and copper, our disregard might be warrantable. But now when one praises home life, home cooking, home training, home influence, we are beginning to say: “Whose home?” And the sentimentalities do not give

is to-morrow rather than to-day that we shall see women free from kitchen drudgery, and home economics a paid profession, such as nursing has late

oman wants any occupation besides h

surprise to those who laughed, and to whom this extreme

n “Wanted ... for General Housework” appeals drearily repeated. And while some of us merely wonder how “Mis’ Whatever is getting along, and the weather what it is, and her baby not through the second summer,” there are those of us who feel secret thanksgiving in the fact that we, too,

ly, as well as to believe secretly, that the truth about living which Jesus taught has been told in certain forms whose ancient interpretation no thinking person holds. Something of the glory of the God-ward

illage theologian

l necessary, every one of ’em. And if we had mo

th this. And on the whole there is more food f

del. And, land, there he is making the best State Senat

s and the Hasketts and the Bettses and the Doles, we begin to suspect that it may be true of all poverty. We are beginning to be ashamed of many another inefficiency and folly which anciently we took for granted as necessary evils. Of his own product the village brewer

o her a disgrace hardly less evident than that of her city sister. We continue to cover up far too much, just as in the cities they cover too much. But we do mention openly things which in the old days we whispered or guesse

the new terminology, we h

,” one of us said, “I know

nother that our new state law

age girl no longer waits at the gate in a blue sash. There are no gates

ean by that—being made love to forever by somebody forever in

ge will say as much as that, yet genetically the thing goes on: Women choose occupations, develop gifts, sail for Europe, refuse “good offers” even if these do hold out “support,” or come out with fine, open

ve not passed; but they lie close to a Romance of Life now coming fast upon us, away here in the vi

does not echo here is the thunder of the industrial conflict. But although most of the village takes sides quite na?vely with the newspaper headlines, yet that is chiefly because the thing lies beyond our experience, and because—like the dwellers in cities—we lack imagination to visualize what is occurring. As far as our experience goes, the most of us are democratic. But w

have incidence. Our sophistication somehow includes our laughter. In these days, in what village could it happen, at the funeral of a well-b

tion will now

in my memory, and are indelibly there because they occurred at the first fun

who would take the platform to speak at the obse

ceased, for—[pointing with his thumb downward

ing the plate, in what modern village church i

bbers there in the lecture

would instantly re

,” and so go serenely on,

absurdities occur. But there is a different humor, even of misadventure and the maladroit. Instead of deploring the old days, however, I

t I’ve lived to see so

sease and marching armies and the like are to leave us, humor and sentimentalism of a sort and gold lace of many sorts must likewise be foregone. We say: “The day is dead. Long be the day.” Ma

or we are knit, and now the fabric is beginning to be woven into a garment. Some are alarmed at the lack of seams, some anxiously question

more to understand than we have guessed. For there

at is going forward in the world. But now the village is the very source of our salvation, social and artistic. It is not that we are finding hu

en, of late, for our irregular streets and our creamy brick. But in our hearts we had been feeling apologetic that we had not more two-storey shops, not

ed somewhat, its quality, never. Always we have been ourselves, simply and unreservedly. Not boldly ourselves, for we do not know that the

ity, against seeing the thing as a thousand others have seen it and saying it as a thousand others have said it, against moving in a mass which has won the right to no social adhesion, but instead stupidly coheres, and does i

ly. Unquestionably this collective advance is a part of experience. But it is not an ultimate of experience. Somewhere there beyond, shining, is a new individualism, whose incarnations shall flow to no melting

implicity which is every one’s birthright. It is Nietzsche’s threefold metamorphosis of the spirit: First the camel, then the lion, last the child. W

federation of the world is to begin in the litt

ity,” says Calliope Marsh, “only it never started in hitched to

And if she were given to selecting texts, I think that she would have selected

e, Wis

914.