The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-12-10
The Commonplace
THE PEOPLE of the world may be divided
By DIR. FRANK CRANE
into two classes. those who find their

THE PEOPLE of the world may be divided
 into two classes, those who find their happiness in the usual, and those who find their happiness in the unusual.
 The first are as a rule healthy, contented, helpful, and optimistic.
 The second are as a rule morbid, restless, pessmstic, and nuisances to all around them.
 The most important thing for human be- ing to learn, is not how to live his life with maximum of contentment and care of body and mind, and the minimum of friction!
 Those have discovered what is perhaps the greatest secret of existence, who have come to realize that it is in the commonplace that one is to find permanent satisfaction; and that the extraordinary, strange, and occasional sources of pleasure are to be regarded as matter by the way, not to be taken account of ill their programme.
 Yet the majority of silly mortals never learn this. Consequently, most people are more or less soured, peevish and discoptented.
 It is the duty of our teachers to lead us back to the enjoyment of life's everydayness.
 The sum of culture, of wisdom, and of in- telligent experience consists in an apprecla- tion of the ordinary events of circumstances, and in proper discounting of the occasional.
 The happiest wife and mother is the one whose delight is in the daily round of the home, the companionship of her husband, the care and guidance of her children. The un- happiest is the wife who is longing to escape this, who calls it drudgery, and whose pleas ures are found only in the occasional ex- cursion theater, or social diversion
 The happiest business man is the man to whom business is fun. The unhappiest Is the man who looks upon his occupation as grind and whose pleasure is in breaking away.
 The happiest workman is the one who en- joys his work the unhappiest is the one whose work worries him and who IS always looking forward to getting away from it. .,
 The great sources of human joy are all commonplace.
 They are Nature, Love and Self-expression (work and play). Anybody can have these. They are as common as dirt. They are as near to the reach of the section hand as to the reach of the railway president. They lie as close to the grocer as to the college pro- lessor.
 Any one can learn how to get the honey of ioy from Nature, from her sun and wave and field. Any one can love and be loved, and fully as gloriously in tenement as in mansion, Any one can find work to do and games to play thereby. Two clerks playing seyen-up on a soap box in a back room can get precisely as much fun out of the game as two dress suited Charities in a plushlined clubhouse
 The cheaper and commoner a thing the more joy in it. For there is more exhilra- tion, take it by and large, than in all va rieties of booze more good feelings produced by bread and butter than by cake and bar le due, more comfort in loving your wife and playing with your children than in loving other mems wives and regarding children us bore.
 l call man truly converted, or enlightened, or born again. or emancipated, or whatever expression suits you, when he has weeded out of his soul the lust for the exceptional, and when he has learned that the greatest fun in the world is TO LIVE and to enjoy those pleasures of life that are COMMON TO ALL THE RACE.
 In time past people could see religion only in extraordinary things, in miracles, ab' normal saints, and esoteric tommyrot; now the world is awakening to it is the dailJ existence that is made free and joyous oy faith.
 Happiness is fruit that grows low along the ground little children and wise men plcA it. Fools are looking up at the trees'<