Because an old-fashioned town like Oldfields grows so slowly and with
such extreme deliberation, is the very reason it seems to have such a
delightful completeness when it has entered fairly upon its maturity.
It is possessed of kindred virtues to a winter pear, which may be
unattractive during its preparatory stages, but which takes time to
gather from the ground and from the air a pleasant and rewarding
individuality and sweetness. The towns which are built in a hurry can
be left in a hurry without a bit of regret, and if it is the fate or
fortune of the elder villages to find themselves the foundation upon
which modern manufacturing communities rear their thinly built houses
and workshops, and their quickly disintegrating communities of people,
the weaknesses of these are more glaring and hopeless in the contrast.
The hurry to make money and do much work, and the ambition to do good
work, war with each other, but, as Longfellow has said, the lie is the
hurrying second-hand of the clock, and the truth the slower hand that
waits and marks the hour. The New England that built itself houses a
hundred years ago was far less oppressed by competition and by other
questions with which the enormous increase of population is worrying
its younger citizens. And the overgrown Oldfields that increase now,
street by street, were built then a single steady sound-timbered house
at a time, and all the neighbors watched them rise, and knew where the
planks were sawn, and where the chimney bricks were burnt.
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