Page:Our Common Land (and other short essays).djvu/107

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
A WORD ON GOOD CITIZENSHIP.
95

gift to his town, than in any way to paralyse his energies or weaken his self-respect. Are there no places to plant with trees, no buildings to erect, no libraries to found, no scholarships to endow? Are there, moreover, none of those many works to achieve, which a nation, a municipality, a vestry, first needs to see done, to learn the use of by using, though finally such a community may prize them more by making an effort to establish similar ones? For instance, no one would dwell more urgently than I on the need of making healthy houses for the poor remunerative; and now the problem of doing so has been in a great measure solved. But do we not owe this to the efforts of a body of men in earlier time who were content to lose money in experiments and example? Pioneers must risk, if not give, largely, that we may travel smoothly over the road which they made with such difficulty. Are we in turn never to be pioneers? Are there no improved public-houses, no improved