Jesse Lynch Williams

“ Now, in man's great outdoors of the city these things better for us. Close at hand lies the beautiful Avenue, stretching in undulating grace for miles in both directions; always interesting, never dark, and invariably cleared for action within twenty-four hours of the hardest blizzard. Sparkling in the sun or glistening in the rain, brilliant and crowded at noonday, or opalescent and mysterious at night, it is ever a refreshment to the weary spirit and a stimulation to a dull mind. ”

“ The beaver city, for example, or the subway of the field-mouse, is thrilling because it reminds us of similar goings-on of our own. The wild animals known by Ernest Thompson Seton and introduced by him to a large circle of admirers—including myself—have proved such universally acceptable acquaintances simply because they are just regular fellows. Whether true naturalists, like him, or near-naturalists, like his imitators, indignantly resent the imputation or not, the popular interest in nature is simply an interest in human nature after all! ”

“ Personally I'd rather take my exercise out of doors than by climbing stairs: though if you do not want to live on the level, there are plenty of apartments that are duplex. In any ease, it must be admitted that the home unites the family closer when it's in an apartment. It is as compact a life on a steam-yacht yet without any motion, except that of the elevator, which makes it easy to get out a desirable thing at times, though utterly impossible when cruising.
Another cherished tradition about apartment-house life is its alleged lack of privacy. ”

“ Whether they make comfortable sleeping quarters for those within or not, they make glad the heart of those without. The passer-by can enjoy, free of charge, the thrill born of beauty, whether it be in nature, like the sunset through the trees across the park, or in art, like a cornice in perfect scale. ”

“ But remember, oh, remember, faithful lovers of nature, that in the winter months the gregarious instinct brings them down from the mountain fastnesses to the closely crowded stamping-grounds of the flats. ”

“ To be of the elect you must look down on the sky-scraper and look up at the ant-hill. In short, love nature only so far as it does not include human nature.
Well, of course, every one has a right to his own tastes, and if you prefer the haunts and habits of birdies and bunnies to the haunts and habits of men and women, you can snub your own genus all you like and nobody will object. ”

“ Air is as free in the country as in the city, and when, as sometimes happens, you can get your township to oil the near-by highway where tireless touring-cars stir up picturesque and permeating clouds of dust, I should say that the air in the country is much purer than the atmosphere of cities; yes, even in the bright and clean up-town districts around the Park in New York. The city hasn't all the advantages nor all the real things of the simple life. ”

“ Out in the country, one is usually awakened at dawn by one's bird neighbors saying "Cheap, cheap," though it is not, or by the bark of our intelligent four-footed friends devouring the morning paper.
It is not continuous sound but sudden noises that crash through one's dreams and one's nerves. Nor is utter silence the most soothing thing in the world. ”

“ So much for man's improvements on Nature, which is the proper task of civilization and true culture. But what of God's free gifts of sunlight, air, and water?
One of the pleasantest advantages of wintering in New York, in my humble opinion, is not the bright lights of Broadway, but God's pure sunshine. The average city house, squeezed in between similar houses, does not, I admit, get much more of this free gift than a tent pitched in a canyon. ”

“ Yes, I admit, in all fairness to Nature, that one should grow such things oneself; and I have done so since I acquired my own "little place in the country." But in my own little flat in the city I can enjoy, even in winter, fresh vegetables, salads, and fruits which in the country are either prohibitive in price, or, like sea-food if your country place is inland, not quite fresh enough at any price. ”

“ Of course, for the other basic needs—food, shelter, and warmth—no one who has ever tried a winter in the country can question the superiority of the city. Food is not only of a finer quality and far greater variety at the metropolitan markets, but considerably lower in price than out in the country where it comes from. For, owing to our modern improvements in production and distribution, nearly all products are first sent in to the city centres and then distributed among the rural districts, and the ultimate consumer pays the double freight. ”

“ Much can be said for the artificial excitements and extravagant gratifications of country life, but it cannot be denied that plain, old-fashioned health is one of "the real things of life," and to cultivate good habits of sleep is a primal necessity, whereas to cultivate hardy perennials is a highly evolved luxury. It is in beds, not in flower-beds, that we spend a third of our existence. ”

“ As a matter of fact and scientific seriousness, the return-to-nature movement is the human expression of the immemorial migratory instinct, which man has by no means lived down. But in the revulsion from too much city life we should not forget that migration works both ways. It is just as natural for birds to fly south in the fall as north in the spring. And consider the dear animals, the non-hibernating animals. A friend writes from Wyoming that there was a band of twenty thousand elk last winter down in Jackson's Hole, south of the Yellowstone Park ”

“ So much for a few of the simple, wholesome diversions of the pioneers in this back-to-the-town movement—the return to human nature. But life, as has been well said, is not all pleasure. A man's duty is to his family.
In my case I went to the country chiefly for my children's sake, and now for the same reason I have sought the quiet retreat of the city.
The business of childhood is education and growing. The country is the best place in the world for these two infant industries as long as they need protection. ”

“ So far as I can make out, it is right and proper to be keen about a city, provided it is built by the dear little beaver, but to be interested in one constructed by your own species indicates that you are a cockney with no soul for "the real things of life." ”

“ Here we find houses that are really homes, old enough to be mellow, lived in enough to have character, and architecturally unconscious enough to have charm. "This is the part of town I love the best of all." ”

“ For example, to sleep with all the windows open, as I do, must be difficult when they open on Fifth Avenue where the motors shriek all night and the buses come up like thunder. No wonder so many palaces and chateaux along the avenue are boarded up this winter, while the municipal lodging-houses are crowded to overflowing. Comparatively few persons, however,, are compelled to have homes on the avenue, and to the vast majority, apparently, neither of these great extremes is typical of "New York life." ”

“ Now, in sheer self-defense, lest I be cast out at this point as a human-nature fakir, I make haste to insert that I have no personal animus against "God's great outdoors." I am not in the least prejudiced against the furred and feathered crowd. I gladly agree that "nature is wonderful." ”

“ Mind you, I do not say that one cannot pound over frozen roads or splash through mud lurking in the shadow for your unwary feet. I did it for years. And years. Excellent exercise. I merely say that most people in the country don't do it. They prefer to hibernate till the tennis-courts are ready and the putting-greens are rolled. Or else they take to dancing. The bane of country life in America is dancing and gambling. It is the effete fondness for indoor sports like the tango and auction bridge that is driving many of us back to the homely virtues of Fifth Avenue. ”

“ In short, I'm not above mingling with the human flock and beholding vanities, vulgarities, kindness, cruelty, capitalism, climbing, goodness, grafting, posing, piety, and the rest of our own wild life. ”

“ Let us be grateful to our distinguished American architects for giving Wealth the opportunity for self-expression in such charming forms. If the exquisite refinement and noble serenity of certain of the newer homes of our newer aristocracy of riches suggest the personalities of the owners, as domestic architecture is supposed to do, then all I have to say is that the muck-rakers did not know what they were talking about and ought to have been sued for criminal libel. ”

“ For family life there is still, I know, a lingering prejudice against a flat because it is flat, or on the ground that it is not on the ground. To choose your home on high where the air is pure is supposed to hurt the sacred atmosphere of home, and rooms distributed horizontally, it seems, lack the virtue of those placed vertically. ”

“ Con men, clergymen; heiresses, actresses; fast people, slow people; good people, bad people; people you know, people you'd like to know, and people you don't want to know—but all of them interesting to look at, to think about.
The difficulty of getting and keeping good servants in the country in winter. Here you can even walk alone without being bored. No long, uneventful stretches of bleak, wintry landscape, where nothing moves, not even the train of thought. ”

“ I will merely say that such problems as furnaces, gardens, garages, snow-shovelling, taking down screens and putting up storm-windows, erecting glass inclosures and laying plank walks, do not enter into the truly simple life of the modern apartment house, where the water-pipes never freeze and you have no roof to leak. ”

“ In the country one might pretend to care, but in the city flowers come from your friends, not your neighbors. You have no neighbors in the city, and that is one of its great advantages. No neighbors, no gossip. ”

“ In the city, so much less time, attention, and money need be devoted to this necessary concession to the carnal nature of man, that one is enabled to double one's energy and opportunities for church work, charity, culture, and uplift. ”

“ We merely assume that it is. Like most traditional beliefs it unfortunately is not so. Any child knows better; our earliest and dearest memories, like those of the billions now asleep forever, are of a lullaby. ”

“ True, big towns include wickedness also, worse wickedness and more of it. Great cities have extremes of everything, including unworldliness. But in great cities it is not so inevitable to be confronted with everything as in the concentrated life of small towns. ”

“ Meanwhile, instead of playing when and where, or if, they please, "after school"—with indiscriminate food and fights in various backyard, these boys were competing in a field equipped expressly for that purpose, and in charge of men who have made a life-study of such work. When angry passions arise, too high to be called down, the belligerents are made to put on the gloves and fight it out fairly, with a master to act as referee. ”

“ Even persons of enormous wealth can afford flats, for they now run as high as twenty thousand dollars a year; perfectly good places to rough it in during the hardship of war-time in winter when Mediterranean cruises must be sacrificed. ”

“ Some of these nature rhapsodists are as bad as the commuters who sleep out on the porch night and talk about it all day, or those all individuals who can't sleep well anywhere and then assume a virtuous air because they get up early—and arouse the whole household. ”

“ Water is meted and metered out to the helpless victims at so much per thousand gallons, the board of health having placed a ban on wells. A mathematical friend of mine in the seat of learning there has estimated that the price of a bath equals the price of a beer, thus putting a premium on uncleanliness, if not on inebriety. ”

“ True, in a city of this size there are plenty to trot with them that trot, but also—and here is the point—plenty to walk with them that walk. Not a few but plenty of all sorts, including even your own! Plenty, if you prefer, to play squash with you, and indoor tennis and basketball and handball, to name a few vigorous forms of exercise for the most part unobtainable in the country. But I shall not dwell on this. There are advantages in being able to swim every day during a blizzard, in gymnasium swimming-pools ”

“ I love the brooklets, I love the treelets, I love the flowerlets so long as I don't have to weed them, and I am extremely fond of birds, preferably ducks done not over eleven minutes. I shoot as many as luck and the law allow once or twice every fall. ”

“ Thanks to the recently established municipal markets—to which the old-fashioned middle-man naturally objects—not a few but many may now secure that wholesome variety in diet and that real pleasure in eating which modern science has happily demonstrated to be a duty to our well-meaning metabolic process. ”

“ Whatever may be said of primary instruction in the country, certainly of secondary education one can find in large cities the best there is for children not yet old enough to go away to boarding-school. ”

“ Catering and house-keeping can be reduced to their simplest terms with a rôtisserie right around the corner, a pâtisserie on the next block, and a delicatessen shop in between. French and Vienna bakeries supply crisp rolls and bread of every shape, size, and flavor fresh every morning with the newspaper. ”

“ Of clubs with men dropping in for cocktails and a bit of gossip. A suffrage shop with women dropping in for speeches and a bit of work. Art stores with windows that make you stop and look. Smart shops with windows that make you stop again. ”