“Our Best Society”
image 1
image 2
image 3
image 4
cropped image 1
"OUR BEST SOCIETY."
Some of our detractors are accustomed to say that we have very little sociability in Brooklyn. People moving here from country towns where everybody knows everybody else, find, or say they find, our people difficult of approach and not at all neighborly in their ways.
This idea will, we think, be found to originate in a mistake. It cannot be expected that in a city like this, partaking as it does of the metropolitan character of our great neighbor over the river, should exhibit the same freedom of social intercourse as is seen in a petty town in the interior. Our citizens are generally engaged in active callings and after the pursuit of the labors of the day, generally prefer the quiet of the home-circle to the interchange of social visitations. Here we generally contrive to mind our own business and let our neighbors do the same. “Live and let live” is the motto of people in these parts.
Nevertheless we have our social circles and do not yield to any in the material of which they are composed. There is as much intellect, wit and geniality here as in any other place of the size that we wot of—the only trouble being that there are too many “sets” and coteries and that the life-blood of society does not circulate with vigor and freedom. What we want more than anything else are literary and social organizations that will tend to bring different cliques and classes into closer communion and fuse elements which now refuse to commingle. The various churches and the societies connected with them of which we have such a goodly number do a vast deal toward bringing about such a result, but of themselves they are insufficient. A strong local feeling is the greatest incentive to sociality and those things which most tend to encourage such a feeling should be sedulously fostered.