The Detroit times. [volume] (Detroit, Mich.) 1903-1920, 1916-10-12
What You Don't Want
BY Or. FRANK CRANE
Copyright. 1915. by Frank Crane)

The trouble everywhere is that to get
what YOU want YOU have to take along
with 1t so many things you don't want.
When You want some food and a bed
You 60 to hotel, and 10 get those two
simple items you have to pay for world
Of supenluties - chandeliers. rugs. or
'heStraS marble pillars, pompous head
walters. gilt chairs and oil paintings.
Every little necessity is embedded in a
mass of non-necessiteS as u flake of gold
IN ten-pound hump of rock.
To obtain needed sustenance AT table
you must eat whole platefuIs of non
nourShing waste
You sit through three hours of fddling
and yawpng Al the opera to ret one little
tive-mlnute stretch of pleasing tune
You listen an hour to a speaker. and
are lucky if he says one sentence that
IS awakening and worth remembering.
You read three hundred pages of
book and mark perhaps half page that
contains any real message. or that is the
.least-wSe memorable.
And there is no region where there is
SO much superfluous junk as in intellec-
tual and spiritual matters. Many. SAYS
Richard JefFries, turn aside the instant
the soul IS mentioned. for fear lest, if
they acknowledge 1t they will be fettered
by medieval conditions"
People are more interested in religion.
morals, and cognate subjects than in any
other things in the world for they have
20 do with the very quality of life here
and the ever pressing mystery of the
hereafter But you cannot find on the
market any advice or leadership that is
not tangled up with some system"
Whole congerles of matters are ugged
IN that DO not interest you. To get your
one grain Of wheat you must accept a
bushel of chaff
When you go to college you find SINH
ar mass Of traditional, useless rubbish
that is forced upon you in the name Of
education. To equip you to climb the
heights Of wisdom and culture, a huge
pack Of baggage is strapped upon your
back and you stagger on under a load
that, supposed TO develop" YOU really
lmpedes you
What the world needs is a return to
simplicity.
We are smothered under non-essentials.
our lives are feeble, irritable. helpless, be-
cause they are cluttered.
Look at the crowd on the main street
Iof city a swarm Of human creatures,
weaving TO and fro-what are they ac-
Icomplishing what that will live ten years
after they are dead? Alas! their whole
Energy is exerted in the struggle for sub
jstence, just food and clothes, and bit
| # precedence. 1t is struggle only for
he means 10 go on struggling.
Think Of the human beings that four
Thousand years or so have been pouring
9ut tides Of energy upon the earth What
infinite stores Of the useless they have
Itoiled to amassl The elaborate lore Of
The Egyptian hierarchy, the endless ira
Iitons Of the Chinese, the huge volume
IF Hindu religious expression the un-
Ieountable TONES Of medieval vagary. the
Iboundess Sahara Of modern romantic
lGction-all utter chaH which the wind Of
lime driveth away
Civilization has become burdensome
-omplexty
our souls are deaf and dumb because
we live in the boiler factory Of success.
Wisdom and worship, the two tall white
lngels Of the soul, have been Gagged in
stitutionalzed-you will find them on ex-
libition. at a price, in the temple and the
university.