Across the Street

"Across the Street" by Sarah Orne Jewett is a short story that captures the essence of small-town life in New England. It centers around the relationship between neighbors and the subtle dynamics that shape their interactions. The narrative weaves themes of community, intimacy, and the passage of time, as the characters reflect on their lives and the connections that bind them together. Jewett's evocative prose highlights the beauty of everyday moments and the richness of human experience in a deeply personal yet universally relatable way.

• Short story

								
It would be difficult to say why the village of Oldfields should have
been placed in the least attractive part of the township, if one were
not somewhat familiar with the law of growth of country communities.
The first settlers, being pious kindred of the Pilgrims, were mindful
of the necessity of a meeting-house, and the place for it was chosen
with reference to the convenience of most of the worshipers. Then the
parson was given a parsonage and a tract of glebe land somewhere in
the vicinity of his pulpit, and since this was the centre of social
attraction, the blacksmith built his shop at the nearest cross-road.
And when some enterprising citizen became possessed of an idea that
there were traders enough toiling to and fro on the rough highways to
the nearest larger village to make it worth his while to be an
interceptor, the first step was taken toward a local centre of
commerce, and the village was fairly begun. It had not yet reached a
remarkable size, though there was a time-honored joke because an
enthusiastic old woman had said once, when four or five houses and a
new meeting-house were being built all in one summer, that she
expected now that she might live to see Oldfields a seaport town.
There had been a great excitement over the second meeting-house, to
which the conservative faction had strongly objected, but, after the
radicals had once gained the day, other innovations passed without
public challenge. The old First Parish Church was very white and held
aloft an imposing steeple, and strangers were always commiserated if
they had to leave town without the opportunity of seeing its front by
moonlight. Behind this, and beyond a green which had been the
playground of many generations of boys and girls, was a long row of
horse-sheds, where the farmers' horses enjoyed such part of their
Sunday rest as was permitted them after bringing heavy loads of rural
parishioners to their public devotions. The Sunday church-going was by
no means so carefully observed in these days as in former ones, when
disinclination was anything but a received excuse. In Parson
Leslie's--the doctor's grandfather's--day, it would have condemned a
man or woman to the well-merited reproof of their acquaintances. And
indeed most parishioners felt deprived of a great pleasure when, after
a week of separation from society, of a routine of prosaic farm-work,
they were prevented from seeing their friends parade into church, from
hearing the psalm-singing and the sermon, and listening to the news
afterward. It was like going to mass and going to the theatre and the
opera, and making a round of short calls, and having an outing in
one's own best clothes to see other people's, all rolled into one;
beside which, there was (and is) a superstitious expectation of good
luck in the coming week if the religious obligations were carefully
fulfilled. So many of the old ideas of the efficacy of ecclesiasticism
still linger, most of them by no means unlawfully. The elder people of
New England are as glad to have their clergyman visit them in their
last days as if he granted them absolution and extreme unction. The
old traditions survive in our instincts, although our present opinions
have long since ticketed many thoughts and desires and customs as out
of date and quite exploded.

We go so far in our vigorous observance of the first commandment, and
our fear of worshiping strange gods, that sometimes we are in danger
of forgetting that we must worship God himself. And worship is
something different from a certain sort of constant church-going, or
from even trying to be conformers and to keep our own laws and our
neighbors'.

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.

In these days when Anna Prince was young and had lately come to live
in the doctor's square house, with the three peaked windows in the
roof, and the tall box borders and lilac bushes in its neat front
yard, Oldfields was just beginning to wake from a fifty years'
architectural sleep, and rub its eyes, and see what was thought about
a smart little house with a sharp gabled roof, and much scalloping of
its edges, which a new store-keeper had seen fit to build. There was
one long street which had plenty of room on either side for most of
the houses, and where it divided, each side of the First Parish
Church, it became the East road and the West road, and the rest of the
dwellings strayed off somewhat undecidedly toward the world beyond.
There were a good many poplars in the front yards, though their former
proud ranks were broken in many places, so that surviving veterans
stood on guard irregularly before the houses, where usually one or two
members of the once busy households were also left alone. Many of the
people who lived in the village had outlying land and were farmers of
it, but beside the doctor's there were some other households which the
land supported indirectly, either through professions or because some
kind ancestor had laid by enough money for his children and
grandchildren. The ministers were both excellent men; but Dr. Leslie
was the only man who looked far ahead or saw much or cared much for
true success. In Titian's great Venetian picture of the Presentation
of the Virgin, while the little maiden goes soberly up the steps of
the temple, in the busy crowd beneath only one man is possessed by the
thought that something wonderful is happening, and lifts his head,
forgetting the buyers and sellers and gossipers, as his eyes follow
the sacred sight. Life goes on everywhere like that fragment of it in

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