Casa Grande: A Poem

EDITOR'S TABLE. 879

that banishes from our manners all extremes!" Viewing the average crowd, one is led to believe that some people have neither reason nor discipline. Generally, on the contrary, the individual displays a shameful selfishness which is everywhere exhibited to an extent as contemptible as it is ridiculous. Men, young men, show a greed which completely excludes the thought of common civility, and that blunders along regardless of age, sex, and civil or ecclesiastical distinction. They are completely indifferent to all but self. This condition is most striking on excursions and outings; two young boys or men will obtain a seat and remain on it while women, some with babes, are compelled to stand. Boys and young men rush to the cars, and take the shady side of the train, leaving older people, and women and children, to struggle in the mad rush, where they are entirely helpless, only finally to get into the car to find a seat in the hot sun or to stand, while the young and selfish enjoy good seats in the shade. There are many other ways in which selfishness is displayed; and it is practiced, too, by others than boys and young men. It is seldom, very seldom, that you see a young lady offer an elderly lady her comfortable seat in a crowded street car, a place which a rare man, perhaps much the young lady's senior, may have offered her. Men and women who have comfortable seats will refuse to crowd together to courteously admit a tired passenger, or an attendant at meeting, to a seat. I have in mind a case of this kind where three women and three small children were occupying a seat intended for eight adults — in fact, opposite, where I sat, there were eleven on the same kind of a seat. When a lady with a babe in her arms entered, I suggested that the six crowd together a little, to give room for the mother and her little one, but all I got for my pains was a wordless refusal, and a stare that said, "I would like to demolish you!" So lacking were those ladies in common amenity; and so did they train their children in selfishness. I am not pleading now for consideration for men or women of position or age or distinction in the community; that is a different phase of the question —though none the less neglected — but for everybody, for all classes. I wish that, as a community, we would try and obliterate every vestige of selfishness, and in its place im-