The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1896-08-29

One great sorrow of the modern tour
list is that civilization is relentless in
driving before it the merely picturesque
and peculiar, and in reducing all cities
to a cosmopolitan level. European
peasants are generally dropping the
fashions and customs of their fathers
and grandfathers and the traveller
mourns and misses the gay colors and
jaunty styles of other days. But when
the inveterate nomad does find local
tiles set in high local color with wilful
little provincialisms of their own he
bursts out in paeans of praise.
Such a place we live in, and some of
us find it worth while to set aside the
simplicity of manners our predecessors
established, and maintain a perpetual
struggle in trying, to keep up with the
whims and fads of cities far away and
in other climates. Let us all give over
the attempt. Let us be contented with
our many unconventionalities knowing
that thus we please the fastidious ram
bier, who will advertise our charming
us. We can enjoy our volcano, our
coffee lands and our sugar, and not
worry about appearing provincial We
are merely easy-going, if we are to be-
lieve our dear friends. They like us as
we are and leave us discontentedly to
go back to stricter etiquette.
Quite aside from ticketing people as
provincial or cosmopolitan, they may
be classified indefinitely. Among clas-
sif1cations more or less trite are the
sheep and the goats, the charming and
the bores, the rich and the poor, and
the shearers and the shorn. Ella
Wheeler Wilcox adds another, drawing
her line between those who lean and
those who lift. l humbly suggest still
another. Those whose emotions are
simple and real. call sincerests. Many
others who are not all emotion, whose
feelings are complicated, stimulated
and dramatic, are undoubtedly not sim
cerests. These are called sentimental
lists, you need not be told. Only when
we are sincerests can we feel most in
tensely the thrills of life that come to
us in it's pleasure and it's pain. Our
own self-respect is only to be won by
feigning no grief we do not feel, by
pretending to no greater joy than we
have, by desiring no other emotions
than those that are spontaneous and
healthy.
The difference between true senti-
ment and sentimentality, or between
sincerests and sentimentalists is most
admirably brought out in two of Geo.
Meredith's books, Emilia in England,
and its sequel, Vittoria. There is the
coherent, noble, intense Emilia and
the weak, vacillating man, Wilfred
Pole, who could never tell whether he
actually loved her till she was beyond
his reach. Even then his feeling was
shallow. We find emotion the salt of
Immortality" without which nothing
can be preserved" Aside from ethics, )"
claims ArIo Bates, lit is the only good
in life" True emotion truly protrayed
gives life and greatness to a book.
As you follow along Sir George Tres
sidy and see Mrs. Wards fine painting
of characters, you think she is giving
you a pill of philanthropy in the guise
of most interesting story. A neigh
Dor of mine has a different idea. She
finds the moral outside of politics or
philanthropy 1t is that marriage
solidly built on the mutual respect and
love of two fine natures is unassailable.
The husband and wife have absolute
faith in each other that nothing ever
will or can shake. SIBYL.