The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1886-01-14
Living For Our Ncighbors.

term, that is in the..sense of unsel6shly
devoting your talents and energies to
doing good to others whenever you can
find or make opportunity, is the highest
order of living, and there is small room
for finding fault with one who has con-
secrated his life to so noble an aim. But
there is another sense in which the words
may be used, when but little of unselGsh-
ness or of any other Christian virtue is
implied in their application.
For everything depends upon what
Others you live for, and how you live for
them. There are men and women in
every town, and upon every block in
town, whose chief rule of conduct is the
supposed opinions of their neighbors,
and who may truly be said, therefore, to
live for their neighbors rather than for
themselves.
Is the house painted anew on the out
side, at time when matters are not
going on in the dingy Office exactly as
the husband and father could wish :?
Depend upon it, the colors are not laid
on to please home folks so much as to
satisfy eyes across the way. Is the old
carriage relegated to the woodshed aud q
point strained in order to replace it with
bfand new one; that shines as though
it we're fresh from the hands of the boot:
black brigade? Husband and wife may
recline, more .orEless at ease, upon the
luxurious. back seats whenever they go
out driving thereafter, but we may be
sure that they occupy back seats in their
owusthougbts as well. The carriage was
really bought for the neighbors. A new
piano sounds. .uoue the less sweetly, per.
haps, for sounding preternaturally loud
when it is frs. installed in the parlor,
and the windows are opened for yentila-
tion and other purposes. An unusually
fine carpet, also, never appears to so great
advantage as when it is spread on the
lawn or OH the back fence, to be beaten,
of course, and nothing short of sudden
shower is likely to drive it within doors
before nightfall. In these and thou
sand other great and small matters of
everyday life the restricted class under
consideration may give passing thought
to their own comfort and pleasure, but
they hold their neighbors and their
2neighbors' opinion in steady regard.
How many people again, think you,
would undergo the worry and expense
and discomfort incidental to the annual
Summer hegira to the springs, the noun
tains, the seaside. the country, if their
neighbors did not drive them away, either
by going themselves or by staying at
home because they cahaot go. There
are certain very weak-minded brethren
and sisters in society who would rather
prevaricate, or tell downright 6b, if
they dared, than to acknowledge that
they stayed in their own houses in peace
and comfort during the whole of last
season. So strong is the pressure brought
to bear upon this unfortunate class,
indeed, in some communities, that it is
currently reported and believed that
some of them have been known to shut
up the front of their houses and live in
the back rooms until frost kindly came to
there relief, and permiltedthem to appear
before their neighbors again without fear
and without reproach.
The less said about matters of dress,
the better, since there is no knowing
whose skirts or toes we may tread on ii
we venture rudely into this branch of
the subject. Suffice it to say that, were
their no neighbors in the world, there
would be neither tailors nor milliners,
fashions nor frivolites, neither dudes of
the one sex nor their equivalents, if
there be any, in the other. 1t is q we'll
established point, at any rate, that women
do not dress to please the men, nor yet to
please themselves; and it is very much
to be questioned whether they dress to
please anybody. From first to last;
from the hour of buying the material to
the hour that it is worn for the Arst time
in its completed and complicated state,
but one thought is uppermost in the mind
CT it's destined wearer-and that thought
may be fully expressed in two words,
"the neighbors." What will the neigh
bors say, and thinkf is stitched in with
every thread, and tackled on with every
button, and folded into every hem, and
tucked into the plates, and pressed into
the seams, until it becomes so wholly an
integral part of the dress this 1t can
never after be entirely dissociated from
it. At the opera, the ball, the fair, on
the promenade, in the church aisle, the
rustling skirts necessarily echo the secret
thought that was conGded to them at
their creation, and whisper at every mo-
ton What will the neighbors say; what
aoiN the neighbors say?
And men are not very much wiser as
regards dress or any other particular
whereby the neighbors may be duly i'm
pressed. 1t is high order of intellect
that can find itself surrounded by q new
silk hat, worn for the first time to church,
and that can erase from the lines of the
face under its brim that peculiar nebu-
lous, kindly and somewhat vacant express
sion which says as plainly as words,
what do the neighbors think? And SO
of other matters besides dress. How
many speeches and addresses in the lec-
ture room, in the Legislature, in Congress,
are inspired solely by this one idea-the
neighbors. How many sermons in the
pulpit are preached for the admiration of
the neighbors. How many prayers in
public are addressed to the neighbors.
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