The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-09-16
EVENING CHAT
By RUTH CAMERON.

Do you know who your next door
neighbors are?
Have you ever done any little acts
of kindness to them?
How perfectly absurd that must
sound to my country readers. About
like asking, do you eat three meals
a day and go to bed at night?'
But you see those queries aren't
meant for them at all. but for those
unfortunate folk, the city dwellers
whose lack of neighbors always makes
me think of the old couplet-
Water, water everywhere; nor any
drop to drink
The absolutely heartless way in
which folks in the CITY live for years.
damned together side by side. or more
likely over and under each other, with
sorrows and happiness that transpire
SO close to their own. is perfectly ex-
traordinary to me.
was recently visiting woman who
lives in a huge apartment house in the
city. She has an apartment on the
third floor. We were climbing . the
stairs one day when I noticed black
streamer on the door of one of the
apartments on the first floor.
My dear. look" I cried. t'someone
is dead. Why, you didn't tell me any,
one was ILL.,
st didn't know it," answered my
friend.
Later found by inquiry that the
lily, that she had been i'll for several
weeks with typhoid fever and that she
had three small children.
AS far as could find out. none of
the other tenants had in any way
interested themselves in their neigh
boris trouble. Two other families in
the same apartment, with whom my
friend was acquainted. were as sur
prised as she at the death IN their
midst.
Now 1 know that if that family had
lived in the town where live. or any
town like it, all the neighbors for at
| least half mile around would have
known of its trouble and would have
tried to do something to help out.
They would have carried the deli
cacies of their table and garden to
the sick mother. They would have
helped amuse and take care OF the
children. They would have shared the
doctors words of encouragement with
the father with a sympathy and inter-
est that would have helped to make
him feel less lonely.
And chief among those to try to
do something kind. I know my city
friend would have been. Tor she Is q
very kind and generous woman II Is
only that the city's cruel and thought
less habit of unneighborliness has her,
like all the rest. in its grip.
know Just exactly what the city
dweller is going to answer to this ar
raignment.
She is going to say that in the city
where people are constantly coming
and going, and where there are so
very many. it is impossible to make
friends of all the people about you.
Granted, city dweller.
I'll go a step further and even adj
nit that it would be undesirable. even
If it were possible, to make friends or
all the people about you I don't pc
lieve in mere propinqu1ty frlenosnlps
than do.
But you can take a little interest in
them. know a little about them be
ready to help them in trouble. treat
them as if you were living among hui
man beings like yourself and not
among creatures of an alien race, can't
you?
can't you?
And If Won want a definition of that
word or any further suggestion as to
how to be neighborly, I refer you to a
Source so great 1 need not name IT,
and to a definition you have probably
already read a dozen times