Evening star., 1932-05-27

RLS, however, to fall in love with the
certain place. Be 1t ever SO humble,
there is no place quite like 1t to the
heart which works that way.
He who calls home the place under
his hat has many advantages in a
world and universe such as this. where
everything seems to grow from nothing,
and to disappear at the most nappro-
pirate moments.
We are children Of the dust and the
flame, and we must expect to be olown
about q bit. We laugh at the moth
which singes its wings, but we are all
moths.
Home is what we make It, true, but
out of its sublime intangibility comes
great tangibility, which one can see,
and touch.
1t is because the days Of childhood
are formative that the sights and
sounds, the perfumes, even, OF past
scenes and days become a part OF the
emotional makeup Of human beings,
depending upon whether they are the
possessors Of what mankind has chosen
to call soul.
1t is the soul, for want of better
name, which must bear the brunt OF
homesickness, the soul which makes a
sudden clutch at the throat. out OF no
dissatisfaction with ones place or lot,
but solely as result Of the stubborn
fact Of ones nativity.
A sudden thought Of death, rising in
the night. seems and Is too monstrous
to be borne; a man turns his mind
rapidly into other channels, any chan
nelS, to get away from the idea.
Mans alonenesS In the universe. cut
off from the land Of his birth, is like
wise a special thought, coming to one
at the most unexpected times, often the
more undesirable because it cuts IN Oh
otherwise happy moments.
Here Is this great and wide city, des-
tined to be. under Heaven, one OF the
most beautiful ever built by man. One
is happy here, and knows no reason for
change.
Then. in a twinkle Of an eye, train
pulls out, and one somehow sees long
rows of corn, and q fiat landscape and
Grabbed old fellows In big hickory hats,
and knows suddenly without any doubt
that home Is there.
Would one be happy there now?
1t is the eternal question OF the ex-
patriate and it cannot be answered; u
is one OF the perennial puzzles whlch
tend to keep life interesting and alive.
How sad it would be to go back,
flushed with love for the old scenes,
and to md that somehow they had
changed. and the people with them,
and ones self, too.
Their old-time inquisitiveness, so
charming In retrospect, would it ap-
pear all that 1t had once been. after
one had become used to the aloofness
of a far land?
1t is useless questioning.
There Is no way to find out except
~
virtue. raises a wary hand. There Is
no rush in life for those who refuse
to be rushed: time brings everything,
and everything is interesting.
Let us abide by the still waters OF
time and place. and see what this great
universe has in store for one, for each
one. SO small in comparison with the
whole. so large for ones self
All time and space comes to focus
in one: and this one now stands in
the station. watching the long train
pull out, ard thinking how fine 1t
would be TO be aboard and 90 rolling
back to the homeland.
Silently he congratulateS those here
whose homeland is here; they need
never know the lump in the throat
and the unwanted Self-pity which even
the most reliant nature sometimes finds
thrust upon him with startling sudden
ness out of nothing much.
Man is in thrall to great and small
things at once. He cannot tell at anv
time when some triviality may decide
what much thought fails to elucidate
This man on the platform, looking
out along converging tracks. Is at once
the symbol of railroad romance and of
that eternal unrest which besets human
nature but to upset it for its own good.
nHI ~
they are tough enough to bear the
strain