Your True Commuter Enjoys the Routine

1907

He Must Be by Nature a Man Who Takes to Routine

Your true commuter must be by nature a man who takes to routine. There are some who have commuted for a quarter century or more and yet have not acquired the trick and never will. They are the ones who write letters to the newspapers, airing their grievances against the heartless railroad corporations. They are not born commuters. They have had commutation thrust upon them.

But many really enjoy the life of the commuter. They like the clocklike regularity. They like the pleasant social aspect of the early morning trip to town, the neighborly interest in one another's affairs, the ample time for reading the newspapers, which numerous city residents miss by not being obliged to get an early start. They look forward to the pleasant relaxation of the whist game on the way home, with head on one side to keep the smoke out of their eyes. Some of them even say that they enjoy being awakened early in the morning.

In time all who work in New York will come to it. Meanwhile, for the man with a family it appears to be in many ways a happy solution of a difficult problem. Undoubtedly it is a more wholesome existence physically, but mentally and spiritually it has the defects of its virtues when pursued all the year round. The commuter devotes the best part of the day to one narrow corner of the city. The rest of his time not consumed on the train is in still more narrowing atmosphere of the suburbs. He neither gets all the way into the life of the city nor clean out into the country. So his view of things has neither the perspective of robust rurality nor the sophistication of a man in the city and of it. His return to nature is only halfway. His urbanity is suburbanity. Much of our literature, art and especially criticisms show the taint of the commuter's point of view. — Jesse Lynch Williams in Century.