than the man who is paid a lump sum to assume them.



RENUNCIATIONS

Living in a flat, or even in a city house, we do not know, nor care to
know, who the people above or next door to us may be; and they are in
precisely the same position with regard to us. Mere adjacency gives us
no claim upon their acquaintance, nor does it put us at the mercy of
their insistence. Our calling list is not governed by locality, and we
can cut it as we wish without embarrassment. Choice is not so easy in
the suburb. There, willynilly, we must know our neighbors and be known
by them. Fortunately, in most instances they will be found to be of
the right sort, if not fully congenial.

The theater, too, must become rather a red-letter diversion than a
regular feature of our existence, if it has been so. Whatever
enthusiasm we may possess for the opera, an occasional visit, with its
midnight return, will soon come to satisfy us. Our pet lectures, club
life, participation in public affairs, frequent mail delivery,
convenience of shopping, two-minute car service, and freedom from time
tables--these suggest what we have to put behind us when we pass the
city gates.

It is also the part of wisdom not to forget that, though the country is
alive with delights for us when all nature is garbed in green and the
songbirds carol in the elms and maples, there cometh a time--if we are
of the north--when fur caps are in season, the coal scoop is in every
man's hand, the snow shovel splintereth, and the lawn mower is at rest.