1931-11-10 — Page 7

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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1931.

KEEPING UP APPEARANCES

DARE TO BE POOR!

Ry

WINIFRED HOLTBY,

(In the Manchester Guardian).”

Το

Few people in the world. more in the old Hebrew-Puritan-Victorian hardily risk murder than the per-commercial myth that the good man alatent optimists who always look is the successful man and that the upon the Bright Side of Things. successful man makes money. The Instruction of the hymn to "Count your blessings, name them "Count yol is probably responsible for more lost tempers than any moral maxim. The astronoiny which seeks the stars be yond the silver lining is a perverse But I am and Irritating science.

1 am going to venture upon it. going to risk the murder, chant the maxim, pursue the science. and I am go- take the consequences. ing to suggest that out of all the chaos, misery, deprivation, strain. and other catalogues of misfortunes threatening us this Autumn

come one

will

may

We good thing. escape at last from the monstrous burden of keeping up appearances

we may dare to be poor.

It happened that the other day I was talking to a professionn! wo- man whose work demands that she

She dresses

Aperous.

well.

Hure.

We do not know

THE CHINA MAIL.

DOCTORS' CARS MAY SCHOOLBOY STROKES 50 MEN DIE AFTER A

PARK ANYWHERE.

A New Czech Privilege.

$

OF GENIUS.

Venus Goddess of Pencils.

SUMMER HOWLERS.

The summer examinations are

T

MEAL.

Feast on Crocodile Buried Two Days.

Doctors' motor-cars are above,

Bombay, Sept, 29. the law about parking in the bearing the seasonable crop of Nearly 50 woodcutters, includ- towns of Czecho-Slovakia. ·

howlers; and elders, themselves ing a rich Muslim contractor, The police identify them by a

safely out of reach of the ex-have fallen victims to a mys- small shield illuminated at aminers, are laughing at them terious disease in the jungle near night — carried at the front and with their usual offensive super Borivli and died, according to the buck. It depicts the serpent iority, anys The Times. School-The Indian Daily Mail." on a rod against a background of boy" howlers these mistakes are The disease, it is reported, ori a red cross.

commonly called, as if girls never ginated with the eating of a cro- That is, not fair, codile, which had lain buried These emblems have been pro-made them. vided. for every doctor in the because girls as much as boys underground for two days by two country. It is felt that a doctor are expected nowadays to emul- two semi-aborigine woodcutters. must be able to hurry to look "information vegetable, animal wood-cutters, who were cutting atc Major-General Stanley in.

The story is that a batch of tient without wasting time

a recognised parking and mineral, and not all girls a huge tree in Thana forest, are swotting little wretches, too managed to kill a big crocodile Dr. Alfred Cox, medical secre- brainy to mistake ignorance for and wanted to make meal' of it, tary to the British Medical Asso-knowledge and too cautious to but their master advised them to an un-bury the dead animal and accord- ciation, informed a representa- risk a gallant shot at tive of the Daily Telegraph re-. known answer. Some day aingly the animal was buried, cently that every medical man in German or more probably an

But the temptation to eat, the Britain would welcome

American philosopher

will animal became

so groat that collect howlers by the million, after two days two of them dug and will analyse and classify up the buried animal and made them all by sexes, as means of a feast of it. division; and, if most of them

Was It Cholera? turn out to be the work of boys,

Within a few hours of the that will be partly because boys are more self-reliant and adven-meal, they were attacked by, a turous than, girls, and partly be mysterious disease, something cause the teachers of girls, being similar to a virulent type of still a little on the defensive cholera.

Within two hours of the attack about the education of their sex, will conceal their pupils howlers the two men succumbed to the of scattering them disease and others who had instead, abroad for the entertainment of nursed them also fell victims.

But we nead not The disease rapidly spread in the world, wait for the foreign philosopher the camp and by the time the to prove that there is a serious woodcutters were advised to side to the school-boy and school leave about 50 persons had fallen girl howler: and that, as all victims, Devji Mahomed Bhoy, modern child-psychology goes. to the contractor, being among prove, the proper attitude of the them. elder is not ridicule, but rever- ence before these touching and edifying proofs of innocence, courage, and self-confidence.

similar privilege there, but he did not think the transport authorities would sanction it.

Conditions in Czecho-Slovakia, where there were few big towns, were very different from those in Britain.

Д

be unable to keep one's daughters in decorative idleness, six servants in the bleak basement, a carriage and pair waiting outside the door, and an immensely elaborate dinnering for

was a mark not place. served nightly merely of financial but of spiritual failure. To-day

we are not so Riches appear an unreliable Yet we criterion of moral value. hug our bondage and cling to our old superstitions.

But here is a chance to end it. The war did something, but we as an excep- thought of war-time tional period when all our manners were turned upside down, and Im mediately after the signing of the | Armistice drifted back to our old whys. This is not wartime; but

We Judge Crawford, when dealing at it may be nearly as strangė. do not know what is going to hap. Edmonton County Court with

how number of applications for posses pen to us. chall always appear pretty pro- far the grinding discipline of real sion of premises on the ground not privation, such as Germany has that the tenants were in arreara only through natural inclination known, and Russia has known, may with their rent, declared: "A great many people still think that they but through business policy. If compel us to face realities,

can remain in another man's house But now, before circumstances she goes out in the evening she

It is a most takes a taxi. She gives little force us, let us snatch this good without paying rent. dinners and luncheons.

unfortunate state that this country She ia from the threatening evil,

It is monstrous Occasionally seen with her friends us stop trying to lay out our in-has got into.

our neighbours that such doctrines should prevail, In the stalls of a London theatre. comes to impress

and spend them rather to satisfy and it is intolerable that people is filled with the best ourselves. If we prefer to wear cannot get possession of their pro-

a new perty, or even the rent." cigarettes. All this is largely con- darned stockings and buy sidered by her to be part of her gramophone, record, let professional equipment. But to- If we would rather keep a shabby day she observed, "Thank goodness, carpet (I speak with feeling. Mine, I needn't get any new clothes this my friends tell me, is a disgrace) Autumn. No one will be surprised and spend the money on theatres, to see anyone in last year's hat. At books, and luncheons at Soho re- last I can gel that wireless set." staurants then, let us do it. The It sounted queer, and economical-theatrical profession must live and ly may have been all wrong; but I so must printers. If we prefer to saw her point. At last she could see two plays from the pit instead spend her money on something she of one from the dress circle, let us really wanted rather than something be happy and plebeinn. If we She like tripe and onions-I do-let us to impress her neighbours. wanted a wireless set; but she had enjoy our cheap and humble dish.

In other words, can we not use spent the money on Paris hats and theatre staila la convince acquaint- this period to get rid of a little ances that her professional career snobbery and bunkum and live liven dictated by our own tastes instead was financially successful.

of our neighbours' supposed notions With so much of "what is done?"

She uses expensive scent, and her

case

"Conspicuous Consumption."

I believe that far more of the national income has been spent on

-

Let

ua do it,

mny scem.

little genteel compartments in which arbitrary we all adopt the same standards, wear the same things, eat the same things, and produce the same, and monotony of "appear ances?" We shall probably have to suffer any way, however, immune at the moment, our personal fortunes Can we not at least en- joy whatever good things. remain within our power to obtain, without bothering about their accordance | with our supposed "position?" Can we not remember the wisdom of Marie Lloyd's old song. "It a little of what you fancy does you good!"? not a little of what you fancy you neighbours will fancy that you ought to fancy. Can we not dare to be poor?

and

that is swift response to intellec tual stimulus. What is or was Let him ask himself whether Vulcan? he could do any better. Let him one of the answera given. Vul- "A dirty bird" was read again the famous song in can-Vulture; were ever two The Pirate of Penzance and unrelated suggestions of one mark his own inferiority to the sound thrown together in so Major-General, who could write masterly a single stroke: the a washing bill in Babylonic obscene bird and the grimy good cunciform

tell you welded in a phrase? Who was every detail of Charactacus's Venus? "Goddess of pencils"- uniform, besides knowing all and that only shows what sort about. everything else in the of a world it is that we are mak- world except war. And; thus ing for our trusting youth, a chastened, let him sit down to world to which the goddess of one of the general knowledge beauty is no more than a trade papera set within the last week symbol. No wonder that, asked or two to small boys. He may to complete the phrase: "All know many of the answers; but the world's one should say he will fall very short in what living torment," and one "a is more important, as we are a disgusting place." And so it is sured, than mere learning, and very often while examinations are on; and it is only the adult and unexamined that pretend it is anything else. A "yelp of hounds" and "a squirm of whales" are invertions of which anyone might be proud, no mat- ter how sure he may be about the right names of companies of birds or beasts. But what depths of guilty experience, worthy of "Bric, or Little by Little," lie beneath the explanation of "chuk-| ker" as "a term used in "hen- | racing"? This beats cock-fight-

ing. "Chukker-chuck 'er in l we can see the feathered matron flung from the starting line, tô; die gamely at the winning-post; but where and when do these hen-racing_meetings take place? And do the police know about them?

CANADA OFFERS PARADISE TO HUNTERS

to do, and a world so rich in experi- this dreary business than we comence, muat we shut ourselves up into monly realise. The great Ameri- can sociologist Veblen had a theory of "Conspicuous consumption," cording to which three-quarters or more of the incomes of all above the poverty line are spent exactly on those things which will Impress society rather than on those things which give pleasure to the possessor. Diamonds and deer in the park, a Rolls-Royce car, or a quartet of daughters kept in the idleness of young ladies are merely the more costly manifestations of a process Chat runs through all economic grades. Late dinner with three or four courses in a suburban house- hold, caviare sandwiches at a bridge party, white kid gloves, lunching at the Ritz, immensely elaborate wed- dings, and the ostentatious luxury offered to pet dogs, come A triflu farther down the scale. But right down to the choice of aspidistras and 3 harmonium, electro-plate vases, and butter for cooking in- stead of margarine, the principle persists. It dominates not merely what we do but what we refuse to do. I have the liveliest recollec- tions of a mild reproof because in college days I pushed my luggage to the station on the garden wheel- barrow, in order to save taxi money for a theatre. With my cab fare I could go three times to the gallery during the Savoyard season, to hear the Gilbert and Sullivan's that were

But no my youthful passion, respectability before, pleasure, sald the social code; and so much under its influence are we that even to-day I look furtively round me and hope that none of my more superior friends will see if I creep into an A.B.C. shop to lunch off hot apple' dumplings and cheese-an excellent lunch, anyway-instead of entering a more lordly restaurant. There are people who will not travel by tram. people who must drink ten out of real chinn cups, people who will not be scen queueing up for a pit. We live under the shadow of

our neighbour's judgment, and con- clude that the verdict will be, based upon what we spend,'-',

"The Good Man Has Money." The explanation is simple. It lies

W tang of autumn in the air the woods and mountains, readily mountain goat. Bear are also plen

7ith the fall of the leaf and the tablished points of entry into theƒof bear, “mountain sheep, and

fishing rod is laid aside and the accessible to those in search of tiful in the Ontario northland ant Nimroda look to their rifles and game. The shores of countless in deriaia parts of Quebec. With. shotguns, as the bunting saison la lakes, rivers, and creeks, abound a view to preservation, various ushered in. True to her reputation with all varieties of duck and goose changes have been made this year as one of the world's greatest play and are not infrequently the scene provinces, but even with the na

in the game laws of all Canadisa grounds, a Canada offers wide of the termination of Buccaful range of sport, furred, feathered 04 and horned, to all who care to expeditions after moras, sik and restrictions broad period of army from Canadian centTU, NA penetrate Its far-flupy hinterlands, deer of all kinda. New Brunswick hunting is offered and the invading From Coast to conft, all along the rivals Ontario and Quebec as mouse well as from the United States, in vast system of the Canadian Paci- territory," whlls further west, the already starting on its kapadi Ae Rallway, there are countless es- Lowering Rockles offer their tribute|tions.

Shocked at such depravity the adult will recover his self- esteem, but only to lose it in the contemplation of good things which he might try his hardest to say but never could achieve like the effortless innocence of childhood. "There happened something for which James 1. could not be held responsible. His wife bore him a son." But that was exactly what a great mány people were saying at the time, only not near so neatly. "Solomon had 800 wives and 700 porcupines;" "A momentum is what you give a person when they are leaving:” “A monologue is conversation between two people, such as husband and wife”-no effort could achieve these effects. "What part did the U.S. Navy play in the War?" "It played," answered an ingenuous child, happily an American. "the Stor Spangled. Banner.". Of the story of King Alfred, when the pupils were forbidden to mention any. thing so hackneyed as the cakes, there emerged the following: "King Alfred walked on until he came to a cottage and going in he found a lonely woman, but of the rest the Icss Bald the better." The clumsy I adult hand, will only brush off -the bloom.

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