Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-10-07
THIS AND THAT


dark to keep up his courage. It is q
pSychological process, which some are
brave enough to attribute to God.
He sometimes wonders, when he does
stop to think about such matters, il
mankind has not gone off on the wrong
tack, in considering death only when
such consideration is inevitable.
He wonders II better plan might
not have been to follow the lead OF
such writers as Walt Whitman and
| Maurice Maeterhnck, who wrote about
death in an exalted strain.
The active contemplation of the uni
versal end by the majority Of human be-
ings might make each and every one see
| that malice. craftiness and plain deceit
were inimical to all concerned; II
might tend to make every man, even
the meanest, feel that his time for
doing good was now, that he had bet
ter get busy, II he wished to leave be-
hind him any real memorial in q hui
man mind or heart.
4 x
| At IS, one Is likely to begin to accept
| himself as he Is. Hitherto he has built
up wonderful pictures Of himself In hero
| roles.
At this moot age he begins to see
that there Is q great deal of good for
| tune in being q hero after all, and that
II he has not done better in the
world, in the ordinary sense, 1t is be-
cause he Is not able to. He Is willing
to admit that now
He recalls the conversation he had
yesterday with q well known lawyer,
attorney for q famous writer Of action
stories of the cheaper sort.
| II asked him." said the attorney.
why he did not write something worth
while. He told me that 1t was simply
| q matter Of business with him"
HE writes what he writes" one re-
calls having said, because he cannot
write anything else or write any better.
Each one of US, in this world, does the
best he can. 1t may be mentality or
| it may be physique or its lacks which
prevents us from doing any more, or
any better, but, whichever it is, one
does what he can"
No man under IS years of age ever
spoke 50.
The tendency comes ct this age TO
| feel that life is q joke and all things
show It; I thought so once and now I
know It," Perhaps the poet who wrote
| that was about IS when he penned 1t.
1t is a tendency of the mind which
must be fought with the weapons of
the mind. for only the intelligence will
realize that this mental state Is be-
ginning of let-down in the physical
and mental life.
One tends to grow bored with matters
which formerly interested him. He
| finds that his mind refuses to become
| interested in the type Of book which
once he read with delight.
The only real remedy for this is a
forced lecture by the mind to the mind.
Men for centuries have tried change
of scene, travelling to the ends of the
earth, but such a cure operates, if
it works at all, only because the mind
Is forced, at last, to take stock of itself
If one may induce his mind to make
this stock taking without physical
| transfer of the entire being from one
place to another, perhaps he is just as
well of and has saved a great deal of
money. This is the only meaning which
may be attached to Emerson's dictum,
Travelling is a fools paradise"
To grow old gracefully Is to pass IS
years with some attempt at honesty.
Once by, one may expect to become
! less Of a fool year by year.