The National
Government was represented by the postmaster miles away; the State
government by the tax assessor, a neighbor who came only once a year, if
he came at all, to inquire about one's earthly belongings, which could not
then be concealed in any way; and the local government by the school-
teacher, who was usually a man incapacitated for able-bodied labor or an
unmarried woman.
The citizens made and mended the public roads, looked after the sick in a
neighborly way, bought their children's schoolbooks, and buried their own
dead. I can remember distinctly wondering what a "poor officer" was, for
there were no poor in that society where none was rich.
It was a community of high social consistency, promoted not by a
conscious, disinterested devotion to the common welfare but by the common,
eagerly interested pursuit of the same individual welfares, where there
was room enough for all.
It is well contended in a recent and most profound discussion of this
subject by Professor Turner (of whom I spoke as born on a portage) that
this homogeneity of feeling was the most promising and valuable
characteristic of that American democracy.
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