Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-07-17
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

interest of which we speak is q very
real one, displaying itself by the very
frenzy Of thousands of persons to break
up what they call the monotony Of the
average life.
This state Of mind is not confined to
young people alone. The attacks upon
the morals Of the youngsters died a
natural death, when the discussions
clarified the situation to the point
where every one saw that what was
wrong with the younger generation
was equally at work with their elders.
Dissatisfaction with life was and Is
the root cause Of much that is harmful
and 1nimical in modern-day living, and
this dissatisfaction is based upon an
even deeper cause, lack of interest In
the very comedy and drama of life.
The five or six novels by Jane Austen
VIII awaken true interest in the small
things of life in the minds of all bat
hopelessly lost readers. Such, of course
will not take the trouble to read Jane
Austen or anybody else. 1t is too much
trouble.
One would not hold out the hope that
there Is any magic in these stories.
They are in no sense a correspondence
course I'm happiness. They are not
dinner conversation or help you get
through a meeting of the board of di-
rectors.
They merely interest an average
reader. and, in so doing, show him be-
yond all doubt that life, as lived by the
great mass OF average, ordinary human
beings, In its daily ramifications of eat
ing, drinking, breathing laughing, is an
interesting process.
God moved on the face Of the waters
no more surely than placidity floats
over the Jane Austen novels. The
most thrilling event is an elopement,
the most startling happening q fall
from bridge. The real excitement
comes in the play and interplay of
hopes. desires, aspirations.
The plots are not complicated, in the
sense OF being interviewer by an author
clever in doing that sort of thing. but
are complex in the same way that
everyday life is complex, often without
any one realizing 1t.
II the ideas of lovers could be
charted. or graphs made of the break
fast table thoughts of the married. no
doubt such a complicated map would
be more perplexing to the student
than chart of the heavens.
In q Jane Austen novel the reader
follows diScreetly in the tracks of low
erS, and in this respect Miss Austen, a
clergyman's daughter, antedated Prof.
Sigmund Freud. The English spinster,
however, had a more wholesome, out
look. There is something essentially
unhealthy in the whole trend of mod
ern psychology.
Jane Austen made no such mistake.
She gave us life las is" in exactly the
way that the person of average tenn
permanent and position in civilized hfe
takes it. She proves 1t interesting with
out finding 1t necessary to rename
emotions with fancy sounding "scien-
tiflc" nomenclature which really adds
little to knowledge, after all.
Why men and women act as they do
is not one-tenth as interesting as what
they do and how they do 1t. The
what" and how" make life interest
ing, not so much the why" Even as
life is inexplicable, so its component
parts are not to be explained. It's
manifestations, however. are interest
ing in all their phases-that is why the
person is happy who can be as delighted
with q new book as with a new auto
mobile, as pleased with sunset as with
a Turner, as interested In table con-
versation as in the talk Of some cele-
brated lecturer He has come as near
to solving the problem Of life as any
one ever will.