Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1895 — The Man on the Corner Don’t Like The Cities. [ARTICLE]

The Man on the Corner Don’t Like The Cities.

L'elphi Journal. I have often been asked why I prefer to live in a town the size of Delphi. There are a great many reasons. I want to live a long while and statistics prove that the average life is longer in a small town than in a large one. City business life forces the physical machinery too fast The wheels have to make too many revolutions every minute to suit me. It is all rush and hustle. Business men in cities don’t take time to eat, or if they take a little time to eat they don’t give their meals a chance to settle and get on good terms with the stomach. There are ten dyspeptics in the city to one in the country. Life is too short to.go through it at the rate of sixty miles an hour, week day and Sunday, twelve months in the year. And then tlftre is something unsatisfactory in being one out of a herd of a hundred thousand, or a million. There is too much danger of getting lest. When I go to Chicago and get on one of those packed cars, or push along on one of those crowded streets, I always wish I was back

home, away from the surging, pushing, grabbing, grasping herd. And another thieg: I don’t like the infernal dust and coal soot About the first thing that greets me after I get inside the corporation of a large city Is a flake of soot. It slides down my nose and lands in one of my eyes. And then it is- gouge and rub, wink and blink. And the dust gets in my nose and cinders lodge in my ears. I presume a fellow could get this. lam told such is the case. I never want to get used to it It indicates an unnatural condition that I don’t yearn for. I want the pure air in mine, free from smoke, cinders and soot. Besides there is too much misery and wretchedness in cities and you are continually running up agalnst ii on every corneresS can stand an occasion al beggar, crippled or blind, but I don’t relish them on every cross street. In cities deformities and misfortune are made merchandise of too freely to su it me. Scotes of blind persons sitting on street corners playing organs and mutely asking alms, little girls sitting and begging, men and boys without arms and legs pleading for help—there is too much of it in cities to suit me. I’d prefer to live in the country where there is plenty to eat and where the heart does not become hardened by daily contact with misery and distress. It seems to me the argument is all in favor pf a small town, unless a man wants to go the pace that kills. I’d like to have some one point out the advantage Chicago editors have over the editors of the papers in such towns as Frankfort, Rochester, Logansport, Delphi, Peru. Rensselaer, Attica and others I might mention.