George E. (George Edwin) Waring - Village Improvements and Farm Villages

The following papers on Village Improvements and Farm Villages are reprinted, with some amendments, from "Scribners Monthly." These constitute the more practical part of the book, so far as villages are concerned.

It has, however, been judged appropriate to add to them a paper on Eastern Farming, which originally appeared in "The Atlantic Monthly," and which continues the discussion of the question of village residence as a means for mitigating some of the hardships which beset the lives of isolated country families.

The wide-spread and growing interest in the topics considered makes it seem worth while to give these short essays a more permanent form.

G. E. W., Jr.

Newport, R.I. , June, 1877.

"Next followed the planting of trees by the roadside wherever trees were lacking. The children, sometimes disposed in their thoughtlessness to treat young trees too rudely, were brought in as helpers of the association, while at the same time put under a beneficial culture for themselves. Any boy who would undertake to watch and care for a particular tree for two years was rewarded by having the tree called by his name. Other children were paid for all the loose papers and other unsightly things which they would pick up and remove from the street.

"Gradually the work of the association extended. It soon took in hand the streets connected with the main street. Year by year it pushed out walks from the centre of the village toward its outer borders; year by year it extended its line of trees in the same manner; and year by year there has been a marked improvement in the aspect of the village. Little by little, and in many nameless ways, the houses and barns, the dooryards and farms, have come to wear a look of neatness and intelligent, tasteful care, that makes the Stockbridge of to-day quite a different place from the Stockbridge of twenty years ago. Travellers passing through it are apt to speak of it with admiration as a finished place, and, compared with most even of our New England villages, it has such a look; but the Laurel Hill Association does not consider its home finished, nor its own work completed. Still the work goes on. Committees are even now conning plans for further improvements. By itself, or by suggestions and stimulations offered to others, the association is aiming at the culture of the village people through other agencies than those of outward and physical adornment. It fosters libraries, reading-rooms, and other places of resort where innocent and healthful games, music and conversation will tend to promote the social feeling, and lessen vice by removing some of its causes."