The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1909-06-19
ON BEING GAY.

people, like an individual, can make
a hobby of earnestness, and ride it
strenuously. An individual, or peo-
pie, can cultivate seriousness as a
conventional mark of respectability.
A cultivated seriousness and a syste-
matically prodded strenuousness CON-
monty create habit of thinking of
ones self more highly-and more
persistently-than one ought to think.
1t used to be said of Americans
meaning particularly them of the
Puritan stripe-that they took their
pleasures sadly. The observation
would be less true today. We are
we'll over the old feeling:
There's such charm in melancholy,
1 would not If could be gay"
1t would be more accurate now to
say that we take our pleasures badly.
We have broken away from puritani-
cal restraints, and we are proclaiming
our emancipation with much noise,
buffoonery and hoodlumism. Welike
scenic railways and hilarity, concert
hall music. "boiled live lobsters,"
and "scorching." Our reaction from
the cult of seriousness is crude and
superficial. We have become addict
ed to amusements. We have not yet
mastered enjoyment.
The French ,gai retains perhaps
better than the English gay, the ear
ly conuotations of beautiful and good.
As people, we have not learned to
be gay. Apparently, we lack some
of the instructive factors of spontane-
Gus gaiety.
To be gay, we must first of all be
light hearted, and the American peo.
pie, with all its furious devotion to
amusements, is not altogether light
hearted 1t worries overmuch about
the practical concerns of life, and is
too obsessed with the Importance of
beating the record" in every under
taking. And, even if we were light
hearted, that alone would not enable
us to be gay. For being gay is, in
some sense, an art. 1t calls for meas
ure and discrimination. Above all,
it is. incompatible with vulgarity.
Unhappily as nation we are SO far
from knowing how to be gay that at
least fifty million persons in our total
population of more than eighty mil
lions suppose that they are gay when
they are somewhat vulgar only. On
the other hand, we shall not learn
how TO be gay if we depend altogether
upon diligent cultivation OF eslhetic
standards. These may help us to be
discriminating, but they cannot cre-
ate light-heartedness. Neither can
we create it by joining en- masSe
national society of optimists. Not
only the beautiful, but also the good
is conuoted by the primitive meaning
of gay. But it is goodness of par
ticular kind, or in peculiar sense,
that is implied, and that is essential
10 light -heartedness. 1t is the good
ness, not of the calculating mind, but
of the unspoiled and generous nature
that nature that bubbles over with
good spirits and kindly impulses.
We cannot create the elements of
gaiety by statute, nor yet by much
preaching. Happily, it is unneces-
sary ever to create them. They are
born in the heart of every generation,
and they would live for our well-be-
ing and enjoyment, if only we did not
smother them with sordid aims and
wretched striving with one another
for possessions that yield us little sat-
isfaction when we have obtained them.
If we would learn to be gay, we must
permit ourselves to be light hearted
by more carefully selecting our ambi-
tions.
Some other conditions also are ne
cessary. We must have about us the
things that provoke the disposition
to be gay, and that bring the element
of discrimination into our daily relax
ations. If we really thought it worth
while to be gay, we should care more
than we do for color. Above all, we
should care for flowers. The Amer
ican indifference 10 flowers is Curl
Gus but accurate index of the Ameri-
can mind. Ifthe householder of Rot
terdam or Cologne had to choose be.
tween the bank of shrubbery and
flowers, six or eight feet wide, under
his front windows, and costly carpets
or electric lights in his rooms, he
would not forego the flowers He
would be quite unable to understand
the minds of men who can vote mil
lions of dollars for the decoration
of felonicusly ugly public buildings,
while unable to afford a glorious
wealth of flowers in the parkway
spaces of such street as upper Broad
way in New York City, or in the
barren wastes of the new City Col
lege grounds.
Here and there in the United States,
conspicuously in Boston and in Wash
ington, and in lesser degree in the
cities of the South and West, de-
sire for external beauty is beginning
to find expression. Slowly, perhaps,
but surely, we believe, the American
mind will revise its notions of what
things in life are most worth while.
Some day we shall care less for speed
and more for what we might leisurely
look at on the way. When that day
comes. we shall discover that light
heartedness too has come, and then,
perhaps, with less costly, if not fewer
amusemeuts, we shall begin as peo-
pie to be more gay The Indebendenf.
"How many children have you :"
said the tourist affably.
"I dunno exactly" answered the
tired looking woman.
"You don't know ?"
mot for certain. Willie's gone
fshin' Tommy's breakin' in colt ;
Georgie's borrowed his fathers shot
gun to go huntin' an Esmeralda Ann
is thinkin' of elopin'. never know
how many I've got till supper time
comes, SOS can count 'em."
A LITTLE boy of eight years, at
tending school away from home, wrote
a letter to his sister, from which the
e-ff@-.,;.., ex<k~ooE &c fo1an.