The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-06-11
Blessed Be Nothing
By DIR. FRANK CRANE

Our greatest bother is what we have gath cred together for our comfort and conven- fence. We never realize this so much as when we go to move. Then out of closets and storerooms, from bureau drawers, and from under beds, from the upper shelves of the pantry and the library, emerge a motley herd of old and fuzzy and worm-eaten books and clothes and chairs and bric-a-brac, to stand before us tormenting us to decide whether we shall throw them away or keep them another seven years. Finally we pay excessive freight on them-and store them in new closets, cellars, holes, drawers and upper shelves.
 We envy Thoreau, who, in his cabin by Walden pond, had no furniture; he saw a pretty stone one day and gave it house room, but when he discovered. that it had to be dusted every month or so he threw it away and was free. <
 Every library has books, to the extentsof fully nine-tenths, that ought to go. We cannot muster courage to give them to the secondhand man-you notice I say give. Dr. Holmes, in his old age, had reduced his collection of books to forty or fifty. a
 On my desk I find collection of distract ing litter. Worthless old letters, pamphlets, abortive essays, notess and tokens cling to the work table like barnacles. Oh, that some benevolent housemaidp would burn the mess without my knowledge. l should be angry, but saved.
 Verify, "a mans life consistent not in the abundance of things he possesseth." Thereof consists his despair. We are obsessed, hag ridden, smothered and devoured by our lares and penates. ~
 Baggage is the curse of travel. Start for Europe with three trunks, and your life will be labor and sorrow.s Most of the time you might be viewing the Pitti palace Tor the coliseum by moonlight you will be chas- ing the lost trunk, the old oaken trunk, the iron-bound trunk, the moss-covered trunk you packed up so welly I knew a newspaper reporter who went south without even a change of linen; when his shirt got soiled he threw it away and bought . new one.
 HoW many men go through life dragging mountain of impediments. They spend their energy acquiring things they wish they could get rid of. The first part of their life they are buying house and paying off the mortgage; the latter part they devote to trying to sell it for half what 1t cost them. The woman is as bad. Her bird and cat and blue tea set anchor her with chains of brass and triple steel.
 Let us who are perforce humble, therefore, rejoice that failure and low station, -ee- diocrity and obscurity have their eompensa- tiOns. We, the tramps and scrbblers, shoe makers and day laborers, who are not en- dowed, to whom tomorrow is uncertain, may rejoice in this, that to be a success in this world means a trainload of baggage, hordes of hollow friends, distant relatives suddenly becoming tender and intimate, hundreds of hungry yes looking odt at us from the jun gle of the unemployed, many hand that would strike us for pure envy, and our share of King Solomon's vexRtion of spirit. M
 To have none of these things may irk us. aBut blessed be nothing! It also has it's good side, for 1t means that we can be genuinely sincere and earnest when we pray; Give ,ia this day our daily bread r For the good God alone kneKA where it is coming from