A Want to be Supplied

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A WANT TO BE SUPPLIED.

In this Eastern District of ours we are sadly lacking in many of the essentials of a sound, healthful and perfect community. The blood does not flow briskly enough in our veins—there is too much stagnation, too much laissez faire, too much indifference to those things which are essential to a spirited existence and which should be regarded by all who have our true interests at heart, as essentials and indispensables.

First among these is Organization. There is very little of it here. Everything is in a disintegrated condition. Everybody goes “on his own hook,” and thinks no more of his neighbors than if they were natives of Timbuctoo instead of Williamsburgh. John Smith, for instance, is a citizen; he has lived here eight or ten years perhaps. But what does he do for the good of the community? He roosts here and perhaps buys his groceries at the corner, but that is about all. Of our public interests, in any direction whatever, he knows little and cares still less. And John is a fair exemplar of the average. Those among our citizens who are not professed politicians, but who yet evince by their efforts and action that they take some interest in the good of the community among whom their lot is cast, are so few that they could almost be counted on one’s finger-tips, and even then they are looked upon with a species of wonder. Any man who is not a politician by trade or is not so wealthy that he is perforce compelled to take a prominent position on account of what we may call the richesse oblige, is indeed a rare sight not often to be met with.

This being the case, there is necessarily very little of that sentiment and common feeling founded on mutual pride in and love of the place where one’s household gods are located. There is no place of which we have any knowledge where there are so few associations, social, literary or otherwise as here.

Even in the military line we are sadly deficient. Our young men do not come up to the mark, and do not seem to feel a sufficient pride in the place to effect an organization of this sort among themselves. Those of them who are inclined that way join New York or Brooklyn companies, and we are left without a representative company to do credit to Williamsburgh and to compete with those of other places of not a quarter of our size and importance. The Germans are our sole military representatives and the admirable drill, and the esprit du corps that animate them should put our own young men, who are native and to the manor born, to blush. The only exceptions that we can note favorably are the base-ball club fraternity, who are really doing something toward a better state of things, and in a sensible way too.

Why cannot our young men who make this District their home and who must cherish an attachment for it, shake off this fatal indifference and remove this stigma from among us? Let them unite, not in billiard saloons or drinking holes, but in associations that have for their object some substantial good, calculated to benefit not only themselves but society. Let them cultivate a manly, social spirit, mix with one another frankly and generously and avoid that narrow, selfish species of isolation or cliqueism which has hitherto proved to be so baneful among us.