A kind of invisible roof beneath which every
one lived spread itself over each town. Beneath the roof boys and girls
were born, grew up, quarreled, fought, and formed friendships with their
fellows, were introduced into the mysteries of love, married, and became
the fathers and mothers of children, grew old, sickened, and died.
Within the invisible circle and under the great roof every one knew his
neighbor and was known to him. Strangers did not come and go swiftly and
mysteriously and there was no constant and confusing roar of machinery and
of new projects afoot. For the moment mankind seemed about to take time to
try to understand itself.
In Bidwell there was a man named Peter White who was a tailor and worked
hard at his trade, but who once or twice a year got drunk and beat his
wife. He was arrested each time and had to pay a fine, but there was a
general understanding of the impulse that led to the beating. Most of the
women knowing the wife sympathized with Peter. "She is a noisy thing and
her jaw is never still," the wife of Henry Teeters, the grocer, said to her
husband. "If he gets drunk it's only to forget he's married to her. Then
he goes home to sleep it off and she begins jawing at him. He stands it as
long as he can. It takes a fist to shut up that woman. If he strikes her
it's the only thing he can do."
Allie Mulberry the half-wit was one of the highlights of life in the town.
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