The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1912-06-06
MISPLACED WOMEN AND MEN

There is world OF truth IN the ioI-
lowing by DR.. Frank Crane:
At the restaurant where / had my
dinner last night was waiter who
ought to have been a bishop He had
precisely that heavy air indicating that
a huge weight of thought was oppress-
ing him. that slow movement of the
head and ponderous uplifting Of the
eyelid, that significant reticence and
measured speech, that bespeak posi-
ton. OF course he was merely stupid
and his tyroid gland probably failed to
operate sufficiently; still he ought to
have been, IL not a bishop. at least
judge Excepting the brains he had
every qualification for an office Of
great responsibility.
How often we find the Misplaced
Mani
church circles in Evansville, Ind, who
belonged in the cafes of Paris, and
have seen a racing tout at Nice who
had just the right temperament for a
Christian Endeavorer in Omaha.
1 have now in my minds eye a little
woman who is perfectly wretched,
simply because she, by some shake of
the dice-box Of fate, fell into the wrong
place. She is just light, life-loving,
direct and uncomplicated nature; and
she was born into family. God knows
by what quirk in the law of heredity,
where all but she are self-tormenting.
abnormally conscientious Puritans. To
make the matter worse she married the
wrong man (mainly to get away from
home, I've always thought), and he
has turned her hair gray. Nobody seems
to blame The poor things life seems
to have been a misf1t, that's all
I have seen ministers Of the gospel
who by natural composition should
have been circus clowns; they had that
incurable itch for saying and doing
things to make people laugh.
have known vaudeville actors
whose every instinct was propriety and
who had an uncomfortable desire to
moralize, and hence should have been
in the pulpit.
I knew an old commercial traveller
who had been ION the road" for over
thirty years, living in dusty hotels.
travelling in jerky trains, and taking
lonely cross-country rides in buggies
and sleds; and the one thing that man
wanted more than anything else was a
home. to putter about the house, to
tinker with the clock and mend the
chairs and raise radishes.
How many a tragedy is due to ones
simply being out Of place! the slang
phrase shrewdly expresses it; he is 'In
wrong"
What are you going to do when two
perfectly nice people get married who
have no moral business to live to-
gether? There are two sides to the
divorce question; and perhaps the Off
side has some of the will of God in it.
But then you can have the wrong
kind of child well marry the
wrong spouse. I have seen little poets
born into a family of horsey folk. and
little natural-born cow-punchers enter
the family Of refined and fnicky folk
and staid girls come to hoyden MOI hers
and 1ight-hearted, irresponsible boys
bestowed upon most serious fathers.
Nothing much is to be done. except to
get into the place you belong, if you
can: and if you cannot, then make the
best of it.
Nobody is exactly where he belongs
unless it be the dead man in his grave.
And character is formed and peace is
found, not by escaping, but by adjust
ing.
STILL l feel sorry for the poor waits
of temperament, those whose every day
creaks on its hinges. those between
whose nature and environment there
seems to be hopeless. endless war.