Ruminations on Small Towns

1) Since urban life commenced, the imagination and vigor of the leaders—and even the typical inhabitants — of great cities have been drawn from small communities. Notoriously, great cities (even today) consume their own denizens, recruiting fresh energies from small town and countryside. Few folk who have been city-bred for many generations show much originality or drive. From Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century to the Irish or Yorkshire policeman of today, the city of London, for example, has subsisted by attracting smalltown and rural people of integrity and strength. This is quite as true of New York.

Kirk