Neighborhood Stories

there is to a robin building a nest. There ain’t any more boom to Friendship Village than there is to growth. We just go along and go along, and behave ourselve

somebody gets most built and boards up the windows till something else comes in to go on with. But most of the tim

two towns looked out of the corners of their eyes enough to set quite a few things going for each other unconscious: Red Barns got a new depot, and Friendship Village instantly petitioned for one. Friendship Village set aside a little park,

ory started up there, and then a big tobacco factory. And being as they had three motion-picture houses to our one, and band concerts all Summer instead of just through July, the folks in Silas Sykes’s Friendship Village Corn Canning Industry and in Timothy Toplady’s Enterprise Pickle Manufactory began t

a big meadowlark in the sedge; I wanted to smell the sweet, soft-water smell that Spring rain has. I wanted to watch the crust of the earth move because May was coming up through the mold. I wanted to climb a tree and be a bud. And one morning I got up early bent on doing all these things, and ended by poking round my garden with a stick to see what was coming up—like you

I sings out. “Wher

iting and looked up at me. And t

ole!” s

sick all over. For I remembered that David had

hed it up. “I forgo

rs, and stuck out his thin little chest, an

now. I get $2.

hen do you bank yo

a run again. “I’m docked i

eneral contour of a clay pipe, going to work. His father had been crippled in the factor

a job,” I thought. “I don’t suppose h

st of us uses our heads far more frequent

es before the flies done ’em too much violence in Silas Sykes’s store window. And

ke him pleased with himself. Not that Silas ain’t always pleased

says, “you’re the very

tmosphere all around him; and I guess he’s took to asking me first when he sees me, for fear I’ll come down on to him with an

d you like to help me do a

ver a piece of news—and I always do, for I do hate to be expected to play up to other folks’s startled eyebrows. But with these words of Silas’s

who?”

king ’em all together, store and canning factory c

s I. “Quite

s on, “and Eppleby’s got seven in the store. Tha

,” says I

“Sixty-one of ’em. Ain’t that pre

b! And do them sixty-one wan

men has been facing this thing, and it’s so plain that even a woman must see it: Friendship Village is

ht before her, and lead her up to it, and point it out to her and,” says I, warming up t

somewheres, for the employees—folks’s old furniture and magazines and books and some games—and give ’em a nice time. Here,” says Silas, producing a paper from behind the cheese, “I’ve gone into this thing to the tune of Fifty Dollars. Fifty Dollars. And I though

at him, m

“I’ll take this paper and go round and see som

his whole face and lef

ome resembling a shout. “What have the

r club too, Silas? I thought the

e like he’d run a

eepings with the door open. Didn’t I just tell you that the thing was going to be d

ain’t them folks some

are. Of course we want to help ’em. But they ain’t got anything

“It can’t do ’em no harm,” I says, “to tell ’em about this. Then if any of ’em is thinking of leaving, it may hold on to ’e

ng up,” says Silas. “I wis

time that I ain’t any great hand to do things

h arms when somebody come in for

n ahead and see how little hurt you can do. I’ve got t

That’s me. Kind of auxiliarating around. A member of the Genera

e that we’ll be content not to have any curtains to any windows in the living rooms of this earth, but just to let the boughs and the sun and the day smile in on us, like loving faces. Fade things? Fade ’em? I wonder they didn’t think of that when they made the

like when you was twelve years old, and struck the back stoop, running, about the time the colan

untry slipped away and was sunk in that nice-tasting, crumpy cake. Ain’t it wonderful—well, we’d ought not to bother to go off into that; but sometimes I could draw near to the whole hu

t crumb I come b

to start a club for his and Ti

e. “What’s the profit? Ain’t I getting nasty in my old a

business session. And she see it like I see it: That a club laid on to them sixty-one people had got to be managed awful wise—or what was to result would be c

ide is hurt. I’ve seen ’em both in action, and so have you. And we made out a list—in between doughnuts—of them sixty-one women and girls and children that was working in Friendship Village, and we divided up the list according to which of

r set outside the door with a big clothes-basketful of leggings beside her. She was a strong, straight creature with a mass of gray hair, and a way of putting her hands on her knees when she talked, and eyes that said: “I know and I think,” and not “I’m sure I can’t

Mis’ Beach, “if I kee

ngs?”

ad pairs,” she said. “They leave

ave dreamt of asking him how much anybody give him for anything. But—well, sometime

a dozen,”

d three children—one of them beautiful, and David, taking a clock to pieces and putting it together again, without ever having been taught. You know all about{196} it—and so did I. And while I set there talking with her, I couldn’t keep my mind on anything else but that hole of a home, and the three s

ew years before if somebody like me had gone to see her, I’d of been telling her to be resigned, and to make the best of her lot, and try

ng as you think you are, this world is being held back. It’s you that’s got t

o her. I s’pose I hav

—they merely accepted it and said they’d come. And I went out into the April after-supper light, with a bird or two twittering slee

e’re going to help th

e smoky porch, among the milk bottles, laughing and talking and having a grand time. They had sleeves above their elbows and waists turned in at the throat with ruffles of cheap lace, and hair braided in bunches over their ears and dragged low on their foreheads, and they had long, shiney beads round their necks, and square, shiney buckles on their low shoes. Betty was

“how are you to-night? D

hat?” sa

little something—dance—read a little, maybe.

o have some place give to ’em where they could go. I didn’t discuss it over with ’em at all—but I done the same thing I’d don

k for Silas Sykes, don’t you?

ough: Five and Six Do

d my thoughts come slowly gathering in from the edges of my head and formed here and there in kind of clots, that got acted on by things

Village that was getting ready for its Business meeting in Post-Office Hall on Friday night, and trying its best to keep up with its “business reputation.” And then I’d go on to some more homes of the workers that was keeping up their share in the commercial life of Friendsh

ndow in the side of what was the matter with

uds or dough or whatever; and it’s real handy and practical. This time there come trotting round my house David Beach. My, my but he was a nice little soul. He had bright eyes, that looked up quick as a rabbit’s. And a smile tha

ing out his clock. “I got it all together,”

e alarm clock was ticking away like a jeweller-done job.... Yes, S

is skill of his. And then I thought of the $2.50 a week Silas was giving him for shelling{201} corn. And then I thought of this club tha

s meeting, and just before supper I went to pay my last visit on my list. It was out to the County House to see the supe

ll. A hill is a grand place for a County House. “Look at me,” the County House can say, “I’m what a beneficent and merciful people can do for its unfit.” And I never go by one tha

n anywhere. But one thing I’ve always noticed: When public buildings and such do have cannon out in front of them, they’re always pointing away from the house. Never towar

arried which competes with the ceremony, neck and neck, for importance. In the passageway, the matron called me in the office. She was a tall, thick woman

says the ma

mbroidered things, fringed things. “Did by the inmates,” says she, proud. That word “inmates” is to

price tag. The County House inmates had got ’em hung out there in the hope of earning a little money. One was a bed-spread—a whole crocheted bed-spread. And one—one was a dress crocheted from collar to h

ks wasn’t taught to do some kind of work so’

at me odd

it’s being in here that gives ’em th

slike. And I went along the passage thinking: “She acts like the way things are is the way things ought to be.{204} But it always seems to me that the way thing

ed the door to all I’d been thinking

there were twenty beds. And between each two beds was a shelf and a washbasin, and over it a hook. And old Grandma Stuart sat there by her bed

e said, “I got t

,” I says. And wondered if that w

ey keep the things and bring ’em to us c

’t,” says I, lookin

but they always fall out. And I’ve got to

hat. She was one of them that the thing w

at. I thought they wouldn’t fall out if I had a pocket. She says she can’t be making pockets

e things: A man’s knife, a c

” she said. “I—brought it along. A

life is right close up, and you can all but touch it, and you can almost hear what it says, and you know that it can hear{206} you—yes, and you almost know that it’s waiting, eager, to hear what you are going to say to it. For one force breathes through things, trying to let us know it’s there. It was speaking to me through that wr

and better and cut in a pattern that we haven’t grown to—yet. In the west a little new moon was showing inside the gold circle of the big coming full moon. And it seemed to me as if the world that I was in must

I says to myself as I ran along the road in the{207

ach,” I says, “Oh, David! Will you let me take something? Will you let me borrow t

with me, and we went on together. He ran beside me, the little lad, with his hand in mine. And as I ran, it seemed to me that I wasn’t Calliope M

ady lighted for the Business Meeting,

r list in her hand. But when she saw me she bur

adn’t handed in your report. I—I don’t think he expects y

s. “Very well then, he

liope——”

an in this town, or are

years now, and has paid off its mort

ays I. An

seats by the door. I don’t think Silas, the chairman, see us come in. He can’t of, because he failed to explode. He just

to open up new things for the town. It was Timothy stood back of Zittelhof when he added furniture to his undertaking business, and that started the {209}agitation for the cheese factory out in the hills, and that got the whole county excited about having good roads. And it was these men and Eppleby Holcomb and some others that had got

rs.” “Need of live wires.” “Encourage industry.” “Advance the town, advance the town, advance the town.” And the thoughts that

be done, I rose up and told Silas we had our repor

rregular. But you go on ahead, and we’ll be glad to listen if you thi

and I took it so, beca

church affairs. We’d stood equal to ’em in school affairs, and often agreed with ’em. We’d even repeatedly paid one of ’em

ething to say that I agree to, over and above the report. We’ve talked it over, her and me, and—” she ad

or big, of the kind of skill and energy and patience that{211} they’ve never had the chance or the courage or the little will-power inside ’em—to develop. And there it stays in ’em, undeveloped, till they die. I believe it’s truer of all of us—of you and me—than we’ve any idea of. And this is what I tried to say to ’em

wouldn’t be. I hoped some of ’em would say they’d rather be paid better wages than to be give a club. But perhaps it’s all right. Mebbe the club is one step more we’ve got to take

g and acting like he was{212} talking to me in the Post-Office sto

ve made the town. You’ve done everything once. Do it again—now when the next thing is here to do

aying? What do you mean—folks?” Silas winds up, irritable. Silas knows customers, agents, correspondents,

ture, and magazines, and games to the rest of us. You men are finding out that all your old catch words about advancing the town and making business opportunities, have got something lacking in them, after all. And us women are beginning to see that twenty houses to a block, each keeping clean and orderly and planted on its own hook, each handing out old clothes and toys down to the Flats, each living its own life of cleanliness and home and victual-giving-at-Christmas, that that ain’t being a town after all. It isn’t enough. Oh, deep inside us all ain’t there something that says, I ain’t you, nor you, nor you, nor five th

glad to be that kind of crazy. And the glory is that mo

ty—all but Silas, that don’t think a chairman had ought to show any pleased emotion. And times now when I’m lone

Daily. Nobody knows better than I the long road that there is to travel before we can really do what we dreamed out a little bit about. Nobody better than I knows how slow it

s

could be, for all of us and for the children of all of us, meet together in Post-Office

gest business is taking employers and employees, and all men and wom