"Broken Stowage," by David W. Bone.

But most of all we thought, in a vague sentimental way, about that
pleasant Long Island country through which the engine was haling and
hallooing all those carloads of audacious commuters.

Only the other day we heard a wise man say that he did not care for
Long Island, because one has to travel through a number of
half-built suburbs before getting into real country. We felt, when
he said it, that it would be impossible for us to tell him how much
some of those growing suburbs mean to us, for we have lived in them.
There is not one of those little frame dwellings that doesn't give
us a thrill as we buzz past them. If you voyage from Brooklyn, as we
do, you will have noticed two stations (near Jamaica) called
Clarenceville and Morris Park. Now we have never got off at those
stations, though we intend to some day. But in those rows of small
houses and in sudden glimpses of modest tree-lined streets and
corner drug stores we can see something that we are not subtle
enough to express. We see it again in the scrap of green park by the
station at Queens, and in the brave little public library near the
same station--which we cannot see from the train, though we often
try to; but we know it is there, and probably the same kindly lady
librarian and the children borrowing books. We see it again--or we
did the other day--in a field at Mineola where a number of small
boys were flying kites in the warm, clean, softly perfumed air of a
July afternoon. We see it in the vivid rows of colour in the
florist's meadow at Floral Park. We don't know just what it is, but
over all that broad tract of hardworking suburbs there is a secret
spirit of practical and persevering decency that we somehow
associate with the soul of America.