University of Virginia Library

50. CHAPTER L.
NEIGHBORS.

“DO you know, Harry,” said my wife to me, one
evening when I came home to dinner, “I have
made a discovery?”

Now, the truth was, that my wife was one of those lively,
busy, active, enterprising little women, who are always
making incident for themselves and their friends; and it
was a regular part of my anticipation, as I plodded home
from my office, tired and work-worn, to conjecture what
new thing Eva would find to tell me that night. What had
she done, or altered, or made up, or arranged, as she always
met me full of her subject?

“Well,” said I, “what is this great discovery?”

“My dear, I'll tell you. One of those dumb houses in
our neighborhood has suddenly become alive to me. I've
made an acquaintance.”

Now, I knew that my wife was just that social, conversing,
conversable creature that, had she been in Robinson
Crusoe's island, would have struck up confidential relations
with the monkeys and paroquets, rather than not
have somebody to talk to. Therefore, I was not in the
least surprised, but quite amused, to find that she had
begun neighboring in our vicinity.

“You don't tell me,” said I, “that you have begun to cultivate
acquaintances on this street, so far from the centers
of fashion

“Well, I have, and found quite a treasure, in at the
very next door.”

“And pray now, for curiosity's sake, how did you
manage it?”

“Well, to tell the truth, Harry, I'm the worst person in
the world for keeping up what's called select society; and
I never could bear the feeling of not knowing anything
about anybody that lives next to me. Why, suppose we
should be sick in the night, or anything happen, and we
not have a creature to speak to! It seems dreary to think
of it. So I was curious to know who lived next door; and
I looked down from our chamber-window into the next
back-yard, and saw that whoever it was had a right cunning
little garden, with nasturtiums and geraniums, and
chrysanthemums, and all sorts of pretty things. Well, this
morning I saw the sweetest little dove of a Quaker woman,
in a gray dress, with a pressed crape cap, moving about as
quiet as a chip sparrow among the flowers. And I took
quite a fancy to her, and began to think how I should
make her acquaintance.”

“If that isn't just like you!” said I. “Well, did you run
in and fall on her neck?

“Not exactly. But, you see, we had all our windows
open to air the rooms, and my very best pocket handkerchief
lay on the bureau. And the wind took it up, and
whirled it about, and finally carried it down into that back-yard;
and it lit on her geranium bush. `There, now,' said
I to Alice, `there's a providential opening. I'm just going
to run right down and inquire about my pocket handkerchief.'
Which I did: I just stepped off from our stoop on
to her door-step, and rang the bell. Meanwhile, I saw, on
a nice, shining door plate, that the name was Baxter.
Well, who should open the door but the brown dove in
person, looking just as pretty as a pink in her cap and drab
gown. I declare, Harry, I told Alice I'd a great mind to
adopt the Quaker costume right away. It's a great deal
more becoming than all our finery.”

“Well, my dear,” said I, “that introduces a large subject;
and I want to hear what came next.”

“Oh, well, I spoke up, and said, `Dear Mrs. Baxter, pray
excuse me; but I've been so very careless as to lose my
handkerchief down in your back-yard.' You ought to
have seen the pretty pink color rise in her cheeks; and she
said in such a cunning way, `I'll get it for thee!'

“`Oh, dear, no,' said I, `don't trouble yourself. Please
let me go out into your pretty little garden there.”'

“Well, the upshot was, we went into the garden and had
a long chat about the flowers. And she picked me quite a
bouquet of geraniums. And then I told her all about our
little garden, and how I wanted to make things grow in it,
and didn't know how; and asked her if she wouldn't teach
me. Well, then, she took me into the nicest little drab
nest of a parlor that ever you saw. The carpet was drab,
and the curtains were drab, and the sofas and chairs were
all covered with drab; but the windows were perfectly
blazing with flowers. She had most gorgeous nasturtium
vines trained all around the windows, and scarlet geraniums
that would really make your eyes wink to look at
them. I could't help laughing a little to myself, that they
make it a part of their religion not to have any color, and
then fall back upon all these high-colored operations of
the Lord by way of brightening up their houses. However,
I got a great deal of instruction out of her, and she's going
to come in and show me how to arrange my ferns and other
things I gathered in the country, in a Ward's case; and
she's going to show me, too, how to plant an ivy, so as to
have it grow all around this bay-window. The inside of
hers is a perfect bower.”

“I perceive,” said I, “the result of all was that you swore
eternal friendship on the spot, just like the Eva that
you are.”

“Precisely.”

“And you didn't have the fear of your gentlity before
your eyes?”

“Not a bit. I always have detested gentility.”

“You don't even know the business of her husband.”

“But I do, though. He's a watchmaker, and works for
Tiffany & Co. I know, because she showed me a curious
little clock of his construction; and these things came out
in a parenthesis, you see.”

“I see the hopeless degradation which this will imply in
Aunt Maria's eyes,” said I.

“A fig for Aunt Maria, and a fig for the world! I'm
married now, and can do as I've a mind to. Besides, you
know Quakers are not world's people. They have come
out from it, and don't belong to it. There's something
really refreshing about this dear little body, with her
thee's' and her `thou's' and her nice little ways. And
they're young married people, just like us. She's been in
this house only a year. But, Harry, she knows everybody
on the street,—not in a worldly way, but in the way of her
sect. She's made a visitation of Christian love to every
one of them. Now, isn't that pretty? She's been to see
what she could do for them, and to offer friendship and
kind offices. Isn't that sort of Arcadian, now?”

“Well, and what does she tell you?”

“Oh, there are a great many interesting people on this
street. I can't tell you all about it now, but some that
I think we must try to get acquainted with. In the third
story of that house opposite to us is a poor French gentleman,
who came to New York a political refugee, hoping to
give lessons; but has no faculty for getting along, and his
wife, a delicate little woman with a baby, and they're
very, very poor. I'm going with her to visit them some
time this week. It seems this dear little Ruth was with
her when her baby was born,—this dear little Ruth! It
struck me so curiously to see how interesting she thinks
everybody on this street is.”

“Simply,” said I, “because she looks at them from the
Christian stand-point, Well, dear, I can't but think your
new acquaintance is an acquisition.”

“And only think, Harry, this nice little person is one of
the people that Aunt Maria calls nobody; not rich, not
fashionable, not of the world, in short; but just as sweet

and lovely and refined as she can be. I think those plain,
sincere manners are so charming. It makes you feel so
very near to people to have them call you by your Christian
name right away. She calls me Eva and I call her Ruth;
and I feel somehow as if I must always have known her.”

“I want to see her,” said I.

“You must. It'll amuse you to have her look at you with
her grave, quiet eyes, and call you Harry Henderson. What
an effect it has to hear one's simple, common name, without
fuss or title!”

“Yes,” said I, “I remember how long I called you Eva in
my heart, while I was addressing you at arm's length as
Miss Van Arsdel.”

“It was in the Park, Harry, that we lost the Mr. and Miss,
never to find them again.”

“I've often thought it strange,” said I, “how these unworldly
modes of speaking among the Quakers seem to
have with them a certain dignity. It would be an offense,
a piece of vulgar forwardness, in most people to address
you by your Christian name. But, with them it seems to
be an attempt at realizing a certain ideal of Christian simplicity
and sincerity, which one almost loses sight of in the
conventional course of life.”

“I was very much amused,” said my wife, “at her telling
me of one of her visits of Christian love to a Jew family,
living on this street. And really, Harry, she has learned
an amount of good about the Jews, from cultivating an
intimacy with this family, that is quite astonishing. I'd
no idea how good the Jews were.”

“Well, my little High-Church darling,” said I, “you're
in a fair way to become ultra-liberal, and to find that what
you call the Church doesn't come anywhere near representing
the whole multitude of the elect in this world. I comfort
myself with thinking, all the time, how much more good
there is in the world and in human nature than appears on
the surface.”

“And, now, Harry, that you and I have this home of our
own, we can do some of those things with it that our friends

next door seem to be doing. I thought we might stir about
and see if we couldn't get up a class for this poor Frenchman,
and I'm going to call on his wife. In fact, Harry, I've
been thinking that it must be one's own fault if one has no
friends in one's neighborhood. I can't believe in living on
a street, and never knowing or caring whether your next-door
neighbor is sick or dead, simply because you belong
to a circle up at the other end of the city.”

“Well, dear, you know that I am a democrat by nature.
But I am delighted to have you make these discoveries for
yourself. It was bad enough, in the view of your friends,
presume, for me to have come between you and a fashionable
establishment, and a palace on the Park, without being
guilty of introducing you into such very mixed society as
the course that you're falling into seems to promise. But
wherever you go I'll follow.”