Again, no garden may take the same prize two years in
succession; it must take a higher one or else wait over.
"This prize-garden business is just all right!" said one of the
competitors to our general secretary. "It gives us good things to say to
one another's face instead of bad things at one another's back, it
does!"
That is a merit we claim for it; that it operates, in the most
inexpensive way that can be, to restore the social bond. Hard poverty
minus village neighborship drives the social relation out of the home
and starves out of its victims their spiritual powers to interest and
entertain one another, or even themselves. If something could keep alive
the good aspects of village neighborship without disturbing what is good
in that more energetic social assortment which follows the expansion of
the village into the town or city, we should have better and fairer
towns and cities and a sounder and safer civilization. But it must be
something which will give entirely differing social elements "good
things to say to one another's face instead of bad things at one
another's back."
We believe our Northampton garden competition tends to do this. It
brings together in neighborly fellowship those whom the discrepancies of
social accomplishments would forever hold asunder and it brings them
together without forced equality or awkward condescension, civic
partners in that common weal to neglect which is one of the "dangers and
temptations of the home.
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