Old-Fashioned Neighborliness

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 28, 1909

Old-Fashioned Neighborliness

THERE have been many good things that have come to lighten the burdens of the housewife in these days of modern ideas and thought, but we sometimes wonder if the soul of neighborliness of the old days has not been somewhat crowded out. We well remember in the long ago the afternoon visits to the neighbor down the road, the dropping in for a few minutes’ chat, taking along the knitting, perhaps, or the sewing. What good times those were! Those talks were not of the little tattles of idle rumors, but rather of common household talk that tended to knit closer and closer the bond of true neighborly spirit. There were the children conferences, which did as much to help them as the mothers’ meetings of to-day, with their frills and fancies. There were the interchanges of sympathies that drew hearts closer together, and helped to make things brighter. There were the little kindnesses, such as gifts of good things made from new recipes. The discussions about the flower beds, the exchange of slips, or a division of new flower seeds, were acts that sounded with the ring of true neighborly spirit that is too often lacking in our social atmosphere to-day. Think about this, and let us have more of the old-fashioned neighborliness. — Selected.