Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1918 — GOOD IN OLD DAYS [ARTICLE]

GOOD IN OLD DAYS

Modern Life by No Means Has Monopoly of Virtues. * ? wv — .--—4 And Prominent Among the Things It Lacks Is That “Neighborliness" That Meant So Much in the Bygone Years.,' Neighborliness Is a product of rural localities that deserves transplantation to cities, and sedulous nurture there that It may continue to grow. “Who, then, is my neighbor?” the man “in the city pent” asks himself, as he regards a row of similar house fronts and reflects on the fact that he has only a nodding acquaintance at best with the majority of the inmates. Independence Is fostered by the conditions of living in the country. Ordinarily we do not need the help of the next house, near or far. But let fire come, or a destructive storm, or a predatory visitor, or a serious illness, and the neighbor may be as welcome as angels.

City life is often a battle of the strong, because there are crowds and there are many mouths to feed and many shuffling feet to be shod. If we let ourselves think of it, the vast multitude of identities striving to establish themselves is almost terrifying. Where did so many people come from? Where are they going? How are they to find a lodging for the night? Each of the moving swarm is the center of a circle of friends. The humblest, unless deeply unfortunate, has ties that bind him to earth and make life — in a degree—dear to him.

Out of the pagan wilderness to the urban lights and roarings comes bucolic youth. What will the city do to that unsophistication? Or in what way will its rugged, Innocent power in time come to prevail upon the' city? Your shrewdest, hardest captain of business closes his eyes at his desk and is taken back to murmurous wa-ter-broods and bees, to the aroma of hay, of kine, of burning leaves, to the sound of the whetted scythe or the sight of brfked apples in the windowoTthewoodshed. Why can’t they brown flapjacks or bake beans or concoct apple sauce or cook oatmeal as they did down on the farm? The table was always big enough for the unexpected guest. An egg or a quart of milk was no such great event as it is In the city. There used to be time, too, to settle the affairs of the borough and the nation, to discuss Horace Greeley, and to wind the clock, between supper and early bedtime.

We have filtration, and the vacuum cleaner, and the servant question, and all the other city advantages. But it was something to know the neighbors, and somehow or other “the men that were boys when I was a boy” mean something in a lifetime that the brisk, ambitious, clean-shaven, uppushing generation does not convey. It would do these take-it-or-leave-it fellows good to study the large, leisurely, tranqulllzing ways of their forebears in the days when “civilization” was not on a tear from the cheap lunch to the bargain counter, and home was not a way station betwixt the joy ride and the moving pictures.—Philadelphia Public Ledger.