22 
House 
& Garden 
D O 
I T 
YOUR 
E L 
T HERE was once a man who was walking along a dark road late 
at night. The road was unfamiliar to him and he was afraid lest 
he lose the way. At one particularly dismal spot he mistook the path, 
slipped and fell to his knees. As he tried to scramble up, his weight 
threw him over the edge of what seemed to be a precipice. With sheer, 
main force he grabbed at the edge and clung. Below, his feet dangled 
into space. Terror seized him as he hung there. He felt himself face 
to face with a sudden and terrible death. He saw his body mangled 
on the rocks below. His life flashed past him in a vivid second. 
The strength left his arms; his weight was too much for them. He 
struggled to pull himself up to safety again. He failed. The awfulness 
of the death before him paralyzed his hands. They loosened. He 
dropped. 
When they picked him up, dead, the next morning, they found that 
he had fallen just nine inches. 
A GREAT many people in this country are in the position of that 
man. They are clinging to the edge of what they are sure is a 
precipice and they can’t see anything below but destruction, uncertainty 
and gloom. Everything in the country is headed for the pit. 
Some of these good people are clinging 
to the edge of America. They have heard 
so many rumors of Red Revolution and 
have been inconvenienced by so many 
strikes that they know for a certainty 
that the country is going to be dashed to 
pieces on the rocks of misgovemment. 
Others are clinging to the edge of that 
steep precipice, the high cost of living. 
They are clinging by main force to the 
edge between income and expense, ex¬ 
pecting to drop at any moment into 
starvation and bankruptcy, to be lost for¬ 
ever in the maw of merciless profiteers. 
There are still others who look about 
their houses and their gardens wonder¬ 
ing how they are going to live without 
cooks to cook their meals, charwomen to 
clean up, gardeners to garden. 
T HESE people, like the man in the 
story, can hang on until they drop 
or else they can deliberately let go and 
take the chance. 
This is an era of great changes. We 
must take the chance. We must not ex¬ 
pect to walk the same highroad of safety 
that we thought we did before the war— 
those good old times when prices were 
low and living easy. Of course, there 
never were these good old times. There 
never was an era when men didn’t have 
to struggle for the things worth while in 
life. We only play false with ourselves 
when we think that we ever lived under 
such a regime. Forget those silly illu¬ 
sions. Hang on to that precipice only 
so long as it is good for us to hang on, 
and then—drop. In most cases the drop 
will only be nine inches. It’s the anticipation that hurts most of all. 
But before we drop it is well to look back, as the man in the story 
did, over the past. All men in peril of sudden death are said to have 
a vivid presentation of their lives. This may be fable. At any rate, 
follow the legendary custom, and look back. 
W HAT brought America to the precipice? Why all this shout for 
Americanization? In the majority of cases it is because you 
and I and hundreds of thousands of other perfectly respectable Ameri¬ 
cans have failed to be good Americans. We talk a lot today about 
Americanizing the foreigners who come to our shores. It is the Ameri¬ 
cans who need Americanizing—the John Joneses and Bill Smiths, who 
care so little for good government that they don’t bother to go to the 
polls and vote decent, honest, forward-looking men into office. The 
way to help America be a better country is to be a better American 
yourself. 
Those who are clinging to the narrow edge between income and 
expense might have a vivid presentation of all the things they have 
Good woodwork is often the heritage of an old house. 
Upon it the designers of early America expended a 
rare artistry. In the Boston residence of Ronald T. 
Lyman are found some beautiful examples in the 
door and window frames. The architect was Bidl- 
finch. Miss Lee and Miss Gray, decorators 
done to keep expenses up—the insatiable greed for higher salary and 
less work, for more luxuries and less sanity in dress, amusement and 
manner of living. The sooner Americans let go this precipice of high 
wage and high life, the better it will be for living generally. 
And those who wonder where the maids and the gardeners and the 
help are coming from might do well to look back upon those days in 
America—those really good old times—when folks did their own cook¬ 
ing and gardening or, if they didn’t do it themselves, were perfectly 
capable of doing it. 
Most of the people who cling to this servantless precipice face a 
really serious situation. They aren’t worried by the fact that they 
may have to do the work themselves, but by the terrible realization 
that they don’t know how to do it. The most pathetic sight in life is 
a woman who has been bred to bridge trying to get a meal in a servant¬ 
less kitchen. And next to it is the man whose sole idea of exercise 
has been golf standing helpless in a garden ignorant of how to make 
a drill. 
I N times such as this we can never be sure whether the drop is going 
to be nine inches or nine miles. Most times it is only nine inches. 
It isn't going to be so bad after all. But, 
however far we drop, we will never walk 
the same path again. We can be sure 
of that. We’ll have to hew out a new 
way. That is precisely what people all 
over the world are doing today. In 
nations it is called self-determination; 
in individuals it should be the determina¬ 
tion to do it yourself. 
Corrupt men are in high places. All 
right—go to the polls and vote good 
men in. Sugar costs thirty cents a pound. 
All right—do without sugar for a time. 
Americans are eating too much sugar 
anyhow. We’re piling up for ourselves 
and the next generation a great little 
heritage of rheumatism. Gardeners cost 
$6.50 a day. All right—try making and 
cultivating the garden yourself. Cooks 
demand $80 a month and upwards. All 
right—try your own brand of cooking. 
The average housewife in America cer¬ 
tainly has more intelligence than the 
average Swede girl fresh from Ellis 
Island; she can take advantage of labor- 
saving devices and can study household 
economics. Her house will be better 
maintained and her family better fed. 
We can’t cling to the delusion of the 
good old times forever. We might as 
well drop our nine inches. But before 
drop, for Heaven’s sake, let’s make 
we 
up our minds that, in the place we land, 
we’ll do it ourselves! 
R E 
who wrote to 
EADERS of House &: Garden will 
probably recall the editorial in the 
April issue, “A Little Place in the Coun¬ 
try”. It concerned itself with a reader 
Information Service for advice. She said she was 
getting too old 
our 
to work, and would like to have a little place in the 
country where she could raise roses and white shepherd dogs. She 
had $3,000 saved up for the venture. 
I asked the readers to write me their own ideas of what they would 
do under the circumstances, promising to send these letters on to the 
person who had asked for advice. 
The letters began pouring in. Readers told their own experiences 
under similar circumstances, they offered advice, they sent pictures of 
their homes. Each of these letters was relayed to the lady, who, by the 
way, was the librarian in a small Michigan town. We heard no word 
from her. 
Then, the other day, a letter came back. The local postmaster had 
stamped it “Unclaimed”, and beneath had written, “Deceased”. 
So she never got her little place in the country after all. She never 
got the chance to raise roses and white shepherd dogs. She has found, 
instead, a lovelier place in a far better country, where one never grows 
too old. Richardson Wright. 
