If Youre Going to Live in the Country | Page 3

Thomas H. Orms
and night rattle and bang of the city may go unnoticed for
years but eventually it takes its toll. Then comes a great longing to get
away from it all. If family income is independent of salary earned by a
city job, there is nothing to the problem. Free from a desk in some
skyscraper that father must tend from nine to five, such a family can
select its country home hours away from the city. Ideal! But few are so
fortunate. Most of us consider ourselves lucky to have that city job. It is
to be treated with respect and for us the answer lies in locating just
beyond those indefinite boundaries that limit the urban zone. With the
larger cities, this may be as much as fifty miles from the business
center; with smaller ones the gap can be bridged speedily by
automobile.
Going to live in the country, viewed dispassionately as an accountant's
balance sheet, has attributes that can be recorded in black ink as well as
those that require a robust crimson. If you really want a place where
you need not be constantly rubbing elbows with the rest of the world;
where you can cultivate something more ambitious than window boxes
or an eight by ten pocket-handkerchief garden; where subways and
street clatter can be forgotten; your black column will be far longer
than the one in red. But if nothing feels so good to your foot as smooth
unyielding pavements; if the multicolored electric sign of a moving
picture palace is more entrancing than a vivid sunset; you are at heart a
city bird, intended by temperament to nest behind walls of brick and

steel. There is nothing you can do about it either. In the country the
nights are so black; the birds at dawn too noisy; and Nature when she
storms and scolds, is a fish-wife. Possibly you can learn to endure it all
but will the game be worth the candle? Without true fondness for
outdoors and an inner urge for a measure of seclusion, life in the
country is drear. Don't attempt it.
But for those who care for the cool damp of evening dew; the first
robin of spring hopping pertly across the grass; or a quiet winter
evening with a good book or a radio program of their own choosing
rather than that of the people living across the hall; country life is worth
every cent of its costs and these bear lightly.
Along Fifth avenue, New York, not far from the Metropolitan Museum,
is a typical town house. A man of means maintains it for social and
business reasons. But he does not live there. His intimates know that
only a few minutes after the last dinner guest has departed, his
chauffeur will drive him some twenty miles to a much simpler abode
on a secluded dirt road. Here, he really lives. Whistling tree toads
replace the constant whir of buses and taxicabs.
Most of us cannot be so extravagant. We are fortunate to have one
home, either in the city or the country. Renting or buying it entails
sacrifices, and maintaining it has its unexpected expenses that always
come at the wrong time. What do those who live beyond the limits of
cities and sophisticated villages gain by hanging their crane with the
rabbits and woodchucks?
First, country living is the answer to congestion. Even the most modest
country cottage is more spacious than the average city apartment. Life
in such a house may be simple but not cramped. There is light and air
on all sides. This may seem unimportant but did you ever occupy an
apartment where the windows opened on a court or were but a few feet
from the brick wall of another warren for humans? If the sun reached
your windows an hour or two a day, you were lucky. In a country house
there is sunlight somewhere on pleasant days from morning to night.
That difference can only be understood by those who have known both
ways of living.

In town, light and air cost money; along the rural postal routes it is as
much a part of the scheme of things as summer insects or winter snows.
And it may have a very definite bearing on the well being of all
members of the family. Some suffer more than they realize from lack of
sunlight. Frequently it is the children and, with many families, decision
to move countryward is on their account. In fact, there be some, where
father and mother, if they consulted their own preferences, would stay
in a city apartment convenient to theatres and shops, with friends and
acquaintances close at hand. But their small children lack robustness.
The parents try everything, careful diet, adequate hours of sleep
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