Omaha daily bee., 1921-06-20
Chained to a Key Ring
Rerery Of a Looer Of
Outdoors at HIS Desk
Christopher Morley in "Mince Pie"

know man who carries in his left-leg
trouser pocket large. heavy key ring, on which
there are a dozen or more keys OF all shapes and
sizes. There is a atchkey, and the key OF his
private Office, and the key OF his roll-top DESK
and the key of his safe deposit box and key
10 the little mail box at the front door of his
fiat (he lives in what is known as a pushbutton
apartment house), and key that does something
TO his motor car (not being an automobst,
don't know just WHAT, and key to his locker
at the golf club, and keys of various travelling
baps and trunks and filing cases, and all the
other keys with which busy man burdens him
self They make noble clanking against his
thigh when he walks Che is usually in hurry)'
and he draws them out OF his pocket with some
thing OF an imposing gesture when ne approaches
the ground glass door of his office at ten past
nine every morning Yet sometimes he takes
them out and looks at them sadly. They are
mark and symbol Of servitude, just as surely as
if they had been heated redhot and branded on
his skin.
Not necessarily unhappy servitude has
ten to remark, for servitude is not always an
unhappy condition. 1t may be the happiest OF
conditions, and each of those little metal strips
may be regarded as medal OF honor In tact,
INV friend does so regard them. He does not
think Of the kew of his roll-top desk as a re-
ninder of hateful tasks that must be done willy
nilly, but rather as an emblem of hard work that
he enjoys and that is worth doing. He does not
think of the latchkey as mandate that he must
be home by O'clock rain or shine; nor does ne
think of it as a souvenir of the landlord, who
must be infallib1y paid on the first of the month
next ensuing. No, he thinks OF the latchkey as
magic wand that admits him to realm OF kind
ness, whose service is perfect freedom, as say
the fine old words in the prayer book AND ne
does not think of his safe deposit box as hate
FIJI little casket of leases and life insurance poll
ces and contracts and wills, but rather as the
place where he has put some OF his own past lite
into voluntary bondage-nto Liberty Bondage
at four and quarter per cent yer, however
blithely he may psychologist these matters, ne IS
wise enough to know that he is not free man
However content in servitude, ne does not DllhK
the fact that it is servltude. :,
Upon his will he binds radiant chain"
said Joyce Kilmer in hne sonnet However
radiant, it is still chain
So it is that sometimes, in the luls OF tele-
phonng and signing contracts and talking 10
statesmen and preparing estimates and debating
letters shat must get off tonight, and trying to
wriggle out of serving on the golf clubs house
committee my friend filings away his cigar, gets
corncob pipe out of his desk drawer. and con-
templates his key ring trif1e wisttully. Inns
nubby little tyrantt that he carries about with n
him always makes him think of a river in the tar
Canadian north river that he visited once. long
ago, before he had built up all the barbed wire
of life about his spirit. 1t was green. lucid
river that ran in purposetul way between long
frnges of pine trees. There were sandy shelves
where he and fellow canoelst with the good
gift of silence built camp fires and fried bacon
or fish of their woong. The name OF that
little river (his voice grave as he recalls tl, was
the Peace; and it was not necessary to paddle IL
you didn't feel like it. "The current ram Gt IS
pathetic to hear him say iD from four to seven
miles an hour"
The tobacco smoke Sits and eddies into the
carefully labeled pigeonhoes of his desk, and his
stenographer wonders whether she dare inter-
rupt him to ask whether that word was "pri-
mority" or minority" in the second paragraph
of the memo to Mr.. EbbsInith He smells that
bacon again. he remembers stretching out on the
cool sand to watch the dusk seep up from the
valley and flood the great arch OF green-blue
sky He remembers that there were no key
rings in his pocket then, no papers, no letters
no engagements to meet Mr. tonseca at lunch-
con Of the Rotary club to discuss demurrage.
He remembers the clear sparkle OF the Peace
water in the sunshine, its downward swell and
the slant over many boulder, its milky Vexa-
ton where it slid among stones. he remembers
what he had said to himself then, but had since
forgotten, that no matter what wounds and per-
plexites the world offers, it also offers cure OF
each one if we know where to seek it..
Suddenly he gets vision of the whole race
of men, campers out on swinging ball, broth
ers in the common motherhood of EARTH Born
out OF the same inexplicable soil, bred to the
absurdity of civilization is it that has robbed men
of this sense of kinship? Why he himself, he
feels, could enter a Bedouin tent or an Eskimo
snow-hunt and find some bond Of union with the
inmates The other night, he reflects, he saw
moving pictures of some Fiji natives, and would
read in their genial, grinning faces the same
human impulses he knew in himself. What have
men done to cheat themselves of the enjoyment
of this sense of kinship? Why, he himself, he
he cries, to the stenographers horror.
He thinks of his friends, his partners, his ern-
pioyes. of conductors trains and walters in
lunch rooms and drivers of taxicabs He thinks
in one amazing flash of realization, of all the men
and women he has ever seen or heard of-how
each one nourishes secretly some little rebel
lion, some dream of wider, freer life, life less
hampered less mean, less material He thinks
how all men yearn to cross salt water, to scale
peaks, to tramp until weary under hot sum-
He hears the Peace in its far northern valley
brawlng among stones, and his heart is very low
"Mr. Edwards to see you," says the stenog-
rapher.
"I'm sorry, sir" says Edwards, "but I've had
the offer of another job and think shall
cept it. It's good thing for chap to get
chance
Ny friend slips the key ring back into his
pocket.
whats ths?" he says Nonsense! When
you've got good job, the thing to do is to keep
it. Stick to it, my boy. There's great future
for you here. Don't get any of those fool ideas
about changing around from one thing to an
other"