Locality

“ The modes of thought and feeling characterising the population of different districts bear a stamp so distinct that one is inclined to consider them more strongly marked by provincial locality than by nationality. ”

“ A large body of immigrants, or a number of families from the same locality, generally form a separate settlement—especially if they are of different race from the original settlers; and if they settle in the capital, they usually have a separate quarter allotted to them. ”

“ As the people were no longer serfs of the soil, but free to rove as their interests or pleasure dictated, a wonderful readiness to change the locality of their homes had displayed itself during the first half of this century, and especially the last decade of it. ”

“ The ideas of locality are no longer limited like our view by the trees on each side. The least turn reminds us that we are passing some antre vast, or lateral ridge, occupying a place in the map which thus determines our position. ”

“ If every plant and every flower were found in all places the charm of locality would not exist. Everything varies, and that gives the interest. ”

“ The town--a town of brick and tin--stands at the apparent edge of a vast plain of withered grass, from whose inhospitable aspect it turns and nestles, as if for protection, round the scrub-covered hills to northward. From among the crowd of one-storied dwelling-houses, more imposing structures, the seats of Government and commerce, rise prominently to catch the eye and impress the mind with the pleasing prospect of wealthier civilisation. ”

“ The little Canadian boy's question can be asked about every town and village in the land. There are no two places exactly alike; each one has its own history, which, however simple it may be, is quite worth knowing. The busy manufacturing town, with its tens and hundreds of thousands of people, where all is movement and bustle, has its history; and the lonely country village, where everybody knows everybody else, has often a history even more interesting than that of the big town—if we only knew what to look for, and where to look for it. ”

“ And everywhere through the soft morning vistas we glimpse the villages, the countless villages, the myriad villages, thatched, built of clean new matting, snuggling among grouped palms and sheaves of bamboo; villages, villages, no end of villages, not three hundred yards apart, and dozens and dozens of them in sight all the time; a mighty City, hundreds of miles long, hundreds of miles broad, made all of villages, the biggest city in the earth, and as populous as a European kingdom. ”

“ I had no doubt that I was in the neighborhood of some town, but of its name, and the part of the country in which it was located, I was ignorant. I at length found that I was receding from the woods altogether, and entering a champaign country, in the midst of which I now perceived a town of considerable magnitude, the inhabitants of which were entirely silent, and the town itself presented the appearance of total solitude. ”

“ They should be taught to see in the town common or village green a survival of that primitive institution of land-community upon which town and state are based. They should be taught the meaning of town and family names; how the word 'town' means, primarily, a place hedged in for the purposes of defence; how the picket-fences around home and house-lot are but a survival of the primitive town idea; how home, hamlet, and town live on together in a name like Hampton, or Home-town. They should investigate the most ordinary thing for these are often the most archaic. ”

“ Wild and extensive, remote from the county-town, or indeed any town, the sea and the moors cutting it off from society on one hand, and an enormous property in the hands of an unsocial proprietor as effectually doing so on the other, our children and ourselves looked forward with some dismay to the loss of the agreeable and varied society we had enjoyed in a very different part of England. ”

“ Whether dwelling in the North or in the South, in the East or in the West, whether the shepherd of the Tyrolese Highlands, or the Hollander of the plains, every man is, in a manner, the representative of the home that gave him birth. In the people the country finds its reflection. The effect of the district upon the nature of its inhabitants in size and figure, in color and temperament, in speech and mental characteristics, is unmistakable. Hence the almost infinite diversity in the peculiarities of culture and attainment, as well as of tendency in different nations. ”

“ In the modern teaching of geography, the beginning is made in school-yard or the precinct and from this centre it broadens out to cover one’s city, one’s county, one’s state or province, one’s country, until at last it embraces the round earth. ”

“ Those writers who have imagined a reign of peace and happiness on earth, have generally described a rural country, where each small township was directed by the elders and wise men. This was the key of my design. Each village, however small, usually contains a leader, one among themselves whom they venerate, whose advice they seek in difficulty, and whose good opinion they chiefly value. ”

“ The place is a little market town, the total of whose population in the census records sounds absurdly small; yet it is a complete world in itself; a capital city, with its kingdom and its ruler, for the territory is practically the property of a single family. ”

“ In most of the cities more than half of the births for years have been connected with the foreign element, but it was not expected that the same proportion could be found to exist in rural districts and country towns. ”

“ When I speak of holders of villages, I mean the holders of lands that belong to villages. The whole face of India is parcelled out into estates of villages. [3] The village communities are composed of those who hold and cultivate the land, the established village servants, priest, blacksmith, carpenter, accountant, washerman, basket-maker (whose wife is ex officio the midwife of the little village community) , potter, watchman, barber, shoemaker, &c., &c. ”

“ And in the same way a village community, even an independent township like the ancient or mediaeval city, and a whole territory of which a city is the center, may reasonably be conceived of as one real household, of which all single households form organic parts. ”

“ Here and there, in those sluggish times, a town grew a little larger than its neighbours, as a port or as a centre of government; but all the towns in the world with more than a hundred [199] thousand inhabitants could be counted on a man's fingers. ”

“ These points established, let us suppose a community of one thousand families, enclosed in a territory of a given circumference, and deprived of foreign intercourse. Let this community represent the human race, which, scattered over the face of the earth, is really isolated. ”

“ We may discuss and settle the most important interests of towns or nations, by the application of general theorems or practical maxims previously laid down, without having had consciously suggested to us, once in the whole process, the houses and green fields, the thronged market-places and domestic hearths, of which not only those towns and nations consist, but which the words town and nation confessedly mean. ”

“ It was obligatory that each should permanently live in the province he belonged to. Each province, each tribe and, in many parts each village, had its own language which was different from that of its neighbors. ”

“ Hence in each town there is some man who is, in his brain and performance, an explanation of the tillage, production, factories, banks, churches, ways of living, and society, of that town. If you do not chance to meet him, all that you see will leave you a little puzzled: if you see him, it will become plain. ”

“ The country is thickly populated, but there is only one town, and hardly any villages, the dwellings of the inhabitants being scattered over the fields or grouped round the residence of some well-to-do family. ”

“ The spacious and well-appointed home of the town-builder may now be seen in many a northern community, in a group of less pretentious homes of operatives and tradesmen, the social distinctions between them emphasized by the difference in nationality. ”

“ Those of us who are in this city, and who have not had the privilege of travelling through the settlements, can form very little comprehension of the extent, strength, and population of the Territory, and of the amount of labor, toil, and the results of that toil and labor which are progressing throughout. ”

“ If the first day is devoted to one’s native town or village, the succeeding ones are taken to pay calls of ceremony upon one’s relatives living in other towns or villages, beginning with the mother’s family, and branching into relationships the names of which few foreigners can remember, and which most cannot even comprehend. ”

“ Each town was really a self-sufficing entity, both materially and intellectually. The modern idea of a town is that of a mere local aggregate of individuals, each pursuing a trade or calling with a view to the world-market at large. ”

“ But in the great central region, where there may be some doubt as to the effect of natural causes, who ought to decide the question except the people residing there, who have all their interests there, who have gone there to live with their wives and children? ”

“ A people has, therefore, a twofold location, an immediate one, based upon their actual territory, and a mediate or vicinal one, growing out of its relations to the countries nearest them. The first is a question of the land under their feet; the other, of the neighbors about them. The first or natural location embodies the complex of local geographic conditions which furnish the basis for their tribal or national existence. ”

“ It is a province, but a monumental one; a poorer land, but a sturdy one; a russet and angular type of people, but the girls are prettier than down in England; beautiful and dirty-nosed children, a life ample and jolly in spite of all Calvinism. ”

“ How shall we reveal to this immigrant what this great varied American life means and thus assimilate him into the body politic? Seeking an answer to this problem, the settlement houses have found one of their most effective means in the drama. The southern or southeastern European, filled with emotion, loves to act. In the settlement house, through carefully selected plays, he learns our language and gains the ideals of the land in which he is to live. ”

“ The immediate neighborhood was old, as civilization reckons age in the United States, and was well conserved, It held in high esteem its traditions of itself, approved its own customs, was proud of its prides: a characteristic community of country gentlemen at the side of each of whom a characteristic lady lived and had her peculiar being. ”

“ The existence of a common in association with a town or village or group of villages is not a self-evident proposition, to be taken for granted. It is clearly part of a system which it now becomes our business to investigate. ”

“ He will find amusement, interest, and food for quiet reflection in conversation with people, who, coming from their village homes in the quiet far-off English counties, have formed a compact community, still clinging to their old home associations, and knowing little of the colony they inhabit beyond the stray news now and again brought them. ”

“ We have seen that in localities differing so widely as do mountain-regions, marshes or mud-islands, and jungles, men of different races have developed political heads of this compound kind. And, on observing that the localities, otherwise so unlike, are alike as being severally made up of parts difficult of access, we can not question that to this is mainly due the governmental form under which their inhabitants unite. ”

“ No better example could be found than this old town with its families who had come from well-to-do circumstances, not, as was the case with so many settlers of the new country, in order to escape trouble. ”

“ If it is so at the present day, with a settled population of so many centuries’ standing, how much more must it have been so when each district was peopled by a different tribe of settlers, speaking to some extent different languages, holding different views, following different occupations, and observing different customs! ”

“ In the district of a large city where newly arrived foreign immigrants gather, you will be shown the group of blocks where the Poles or the Hungarians [pg 146] have segregated themselves from the rest, and even within these, the houses where dwell families from a particular province or even from one definite city or village. ”

“ Neighborhood—A recognizable social grouping having certain interests in common, but dependent for certain elemental needs upon some adjacent center within the community area of which it is located.
Rural Industrial—Pertaining to any industry other than farming within the Town and Country area.
[Pg 123]
Population
Foreigner—Refers to foreign-born and native-born of foreign parentage.
New Americans—Usually includes foreign-born and native-born of foreign or mixed parentage, but sometimes refers only to more recent immigration. ”

“ Small local jealousies between one village or town and a neighbouring one are often responsible for this sort of thing, the provincial mind loving to score over the people in the next parish or the next county. ”

“ The society of the village and neighbourhood is not surpassed by any in the state. There are some very pretty country seats in the vicinity, the abodes of planters of intelligence and wealth; and the country around is thickly wooded, with fine plantations interspersed; and the general features of the scenery, though tame, are beautiful. ”

“ I have been often impressed at our country town meetings with the accumulated virility, in each village, of five or six or eight or ten men, who speak so well, and so easily handle the affairs of the town. ”

“ The genesis of local government in Western hamlets is very simple. First comes the settler who, ax in hand, clears the ground for his humble dwelling, and plants whatever seed he has brought with him. ”

“ Certainly the main interest of the Territory, especially for those interested in sociological questions, lies in the quiet and apparently humdrum life of the village communities. As that life is now, so it has been for unnumbered centuries. ”