Norwich bulletin., 1912-08-17
COOPERATION WEST AND LACK
OF IT EAST

smoothly oiled hinges. But there were apt to be pitfalls in the backyard, not to mention occasional spring guns raking the lines of back fences.
 There was cligue on Orchard street which ran to great -grandfathers and didn't quite approve the dwellers on The Flat, not all of whom could tell, for sure, whether they had ever had grandfathers or not
 There was a clan of tenement dwell CTS down at The Point, whom the true town born couldn't be induced to think of as really fellow beings.
 Those who affected the Unipiscopal church regarded the attendants at the Methogational church as more or less ranters, while the latter looked upon the former as 'too stuck up for any thing"
 The entire family of Smythes, in- cluding those who had become by mar riage Smythe- Pelhams and Smythe- Goodwins and Smythe- Oppendykes, always turned cold shoulders on the Paynters and all their relations be- cause once, hundred years ago, old man Painter had got the better of old man Smith in a school meeting.
 ne western DfGC woman IFlG1 ignore these criss- cross entangle- ments; tried to find or make some common ground of interested meeting: tried to start Village Improvement Society, where all could work together for the common good.
 At first she met some encourage ment, but it soon died away and she was forced to give it all up. She was so discouraged and so dispirited that, at last, she sold her cosy-looking, vine-clad rose embowered cottage and went back to a crude farm house in | the west where her neighbors were too much interested in today and to- morrow to think much about yester- 1 day, and where people didn't stay mad for six generations because their great grandfathers once had a swearing match.
 Now, do you suppose that the sort 1 of things which this western woman ran up against in Massachusetts vil- lage has anything to do with our un- willingness to get together and act to- | gether? Are we so hard-shel1ed that we can't break out and run together, i once in a while2
 1 If so, then there isn't much hope for us old 'uns. We're stiff -necked in ! stubborness, and case-hardened in sin. 1 But there ought to be some among the i younger folks,-those whose faces are 1 still refiecting light from the east,- there ought to be some willing to peck i out of their shells before the things get too hard.
 There's one little trait of so- called human nature" which may have some bearing on the general discussion, I l 41,z I,, H,f seeing the evil rather than the good in those about us. There never was | but one Perfect Man. As l understand from unimpeachably orthodox sources, there is only one Absolute Devil, The rest of us are "betwixt and between. .' | There isn't any community existing
 whose inhabitants the sneering pessi- | mist couldn't find fault in, to the last man and woman. Nor Is there a single community existing with one dWeller
 in 1t whose character is wholly de- void of all good, It is universally true 1 that there is a great deal of bad in ] the best of us and great deal sf good in the worst of us, And nay feel ings towards my fellews-yeur feel ing towards your fellows, is apt to be l governed mainly by which of those fellows we see plainest and oftenest
 Seems to me right here is one real distinction between the western and the eastern way of looking at life. Out west they are given to booming and bragging. They're proud of their
 towns and of their farms and of their crops, They get so accustomed to look
 ing on the best side of things that 1t
 becomes a sort of second nature with them. They are so eager to find some thing to brag about that they hunt
 down the good things in their neigh
 hoods and the good traits in their neighbors as eagerly and as persist
 ently as d Massachusetts old maid hunts down a trace of scandal.
 Perhaps this makes them seem a lit- tie 'brash' and bumptious at times 1 But the habit certainly tends towards