The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-03-12


1t is truth that an abiding sad
ness depends more upon sloth than
circumstance. And this is not a
slothful age. Whatever it's short
comings, however much it's riches may
make for ever more numerous excep-
lions the opportunity of a superb
idleness, the tend of present day civil
ization has had put upon its face the
hood and the blinkerS which are the
guards against delay and, for the sake
of hurry, permit the forward view
and that alone. The energy of the
mass, out of which grows the capacity
for ease, denies i'm it's OWN creation
the enjoyment of the chief distinction
supposed to be possessed by the
minority. And sorrow cannot bios
som in the midst of thrift.
Contemporaneous thought has no
time for the introsDection which is
inseparable from melancholy. To be
sad was once a refinement; it is now
an evidence of insanity, its desperate
deeds a hybrid growth on the COM
mon sense which. laughing like a
gambler at adversely, looks to the
change of the cards as the end of
ever-abiding effort. Inseparable from
sadness of spirit is the conscience of
regret; and conscience exists for the
most part as warning memory with
a value as to future action. The
mistakes and the calamities of yes
terday are swallowed UP in the de-
mands of today, and he is very
foolish or a very rich man who can
afford to give them more than their
educational consideration. 1t is
business policy TO forget. The adj
vancing line of human experience
flows ever toward a jointure with
primeval emotion in this: that where
as the original impulse of self-pre-
servation was bred of the isolation of
the individual, it is now the more
potent by reason of the society of
the mass. 1t is an axiom born of the
experience of cities that the most ter
rible of all deserts is that whose
sands comprise humanity. And the
numbing effect on the in-growing ego
which is the result of the elbows of
the world rob not only suffering, but
the meditation of self condemnation
which is self-eXcuse-of the chief
asset of notoriety. There is compen-
sation i'm a grief which carries with it
its sympathetic circle and its willing
listeners Like an oft-told tale 1t
grows with repetition, and eats into
the soul until it is thing almost of
life itself. but he is hero indeed who
would share either his sorrow or his
conscience with himself alone. In
that quiet communion there lies no
chance of sham, no hope of art.
Honesty, native to solitude. rises with
a laugh that puts pretense to flight.
1t is only with ones fellows and by
the aid of their complacent credulity
that disaster or penitence approximate
the proportions which pride would
bespeak in their behalf; and in a busy
time the world is callous if 1t can
not be amused.
1t is doubtless a law that poignancy
of gladness or of sorrow exists in in
verse ratio to the endurance of the
emotion. It is a curious phenomenon
that it is fashionable to simulate grief
and to suppress joy. Yet, possibly,
the second is the longer lived of the
two, a stranger which we are 10th
to recognize except to ourselves, to
guard and to keep so long as may
be inviolate from public regard, with
the sickening fear ever ranging along
the skyline threatening to rape us
of the secret solace which it were ILL
bred to blatantly admit. In the mo-
ment of a community'S disaster, how
ever, charity and sympathy, the re-
flex action of personal contentment,
rise. so to speak, upon their hind
legs. Discretion is given to the winds
gality vents itself for the moment
away from its accustomed drift. We
become philanthropists, each to his
measure, to a man, carried away on
an impulse apart from the separate
experience of knowledge. called to the
surface by the sense of the unusual,
the one stimulus to the selfishly pre-
occupied.
Take a city, wrap it in the singing
blanket of a storm, stop the street
cars with snow and glaze the pave
ments with ice, put the knife of the
wind to the sharpness which can dig
through the overcoats to the mar
row of the rich, and the town is con-
victed on sudden with a conscious
ness of its poor. Behind the club
windows portly gentlemen with fair
round stomachs and sunset faces
blink through the frosted panes at the
flying flakes and. shuddering in the
warm depths of their easy chairs, sign
between the slipping of the steaming
Scotch, liberal checks for charity to
the JUNCTION of their souls.
For the poor, not bit of it! for
themselves For the old memories
drifting through the ages to fat bodies,
of nights on the steppes, of blinded
eyes looking into the wall of impene-
trable white night, of the desolate
howl of the coyote on plains immuta-
BILE to the end of death-for all the
by-gone miseries of the flesh and
wrenching of the hearts of the wan
spirits riding on the wings of the
storm, wailing their message to the
slumbering conscience of their re-
incarnation, oblivious to the inherit
ance of their paini
Lafacdio Hearne said that beauty
was memory, the appeal of the long