The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1919-06-10
A Fine Human Interest
Story of Neighbors.
From the Marietta Journal.

Under the title of "Friends and Neigh
| bors" Thurman Miller, editor of the Will
mington (Ohio) News, prints the story be-
low, which is the best we have read in a
| long time.
If you will read this little story you will
Yourself be a better friend and neighbor.
| We most heartily commend it to you.
81 have been in the newspaper business
now lust nine years. The past six of them
have been very busy, yet very delightful,
years to me as editor of this paper-the
home paper for the people of Clinton coun-
| ty.
81 say this about myself merely to pre-
pare the way for saying that during these
wears | have written hundreds of cards of
thanks for people who found, when they
came to the Office with an obituary, that the
public expression Of thanks to neighbors and
friends was lacking; for people who had been
! i'll a long time and recovered, for some
who had met with calamity, like the burn
| ing of the home or their barn, or some acci-
dent
| 'I did this work for the good people al
ways with what kindness was natural to me,
but at that it was done in a very perfunctory
manner, and with as much brevity as dis
patch. I understood that the people were
doing it in sincere gratitude, and I was will
| ing to help along the best / could, busy as
always was.
"But until the past month I have never
appreciated what card of thanks means,
! | have never known what 'neighbors and
friends actually mean.
"'You will understand that I have not fail
ed to appreciate my nelghbors and my
friends-they have been the Joy of my life,
but actual dependence upon them, coming
from scores and hundreds of people, IS a
new experience FOR me and one that has
brought a new light upon life.
"For example my next-door neighbor for
five weeks has fired my furnace, carried out
the ashes kept my two noisy boys for days
and nights at a stretch, extended the use of
his telephone when mine had to be discon-
nected, and in addition given us the full out
put of his milk factory besides doing me
and my stricken family thousand and one
lkindnesses-and all | could do was to lie
there and say thank you,' not being able
to go on and explain that some day I was
going to get even some way!
"And since have been able to be up and
around the house for a week l have begun
to understand how it came that l didn't die
like so many people did couldn't die!
There was no logic in my dying-dying and
my friends and neighbors? Impossible! l
have found during the past ten days what
the poet meant when he said that it is only
in the agony of parting that we look into
the depths of love-
''They tell me that / went down into the
IValleY, where Cle SnduOWS are long ana QdEh,
but the going and the return have brought
new appropriations of many things-of life,
of home, of friends and of everything.
81 now understand about the cards of
thanks as I never did before. I appreciate
the sincere gratitude that prompts the good
people to express publicly their thanks to
their friends and neighhors, and, let me say,
if I were not in a position where I can
commander a column at will I perhaps
would be sending the newspaper a card of
thanks, just like everybody else does.
"I have come to the conclusion that am
in favor of widening the frame of the old
motto that contains the words, God, Mother
and Home so as to make room for Neigh
bors and Friends
"When get to heaven, which I will if my
plans do not go amiss, I expect to select
some oldest inhabitant like Abraham or
Noah-somebody who has seen the place
build up from a small institution-to show
me about, and 1 have it in my mind that
when we turn into the most beautiful bouie-
ward in heaven, where everything gives one
the impression of being somewhat better and
finer and more restful than any other sepa-
rate part of the place is, I shall ask my es-
cort what this place is, and have notion
he'll say: That's the best part of heaven
that's reserved for neighbors and friends