Evening star., 1935-06-24

realization of failures and shortcomings
to sour their personal lives.
Probably some such cause as this Is
at the bottom Of some, at least, of the
many cases Of churlish nature one meets
in a weeks time.
There is no necessity for any one per-
mitting failures, shortcomings, lacks, in
ferioritieS to spoil lives.
Ruination, perhaps, Is not as bad as
spoliation. For every one who ruins his
life there are thousands who spoil theirs
by permitting quite evident lacks to get
them down.
People make the best of physical lacks,
surely there Is more need to be cheerful
over limitations of other types.
If one cannot exactly rejoice, at least
one can, by a little effort, argue the
self into calm acceptance of in
feriorfties.
One of the big handicaps to overcome
Is the inceSsant reminder by others Of
ones personal failings.
Feel sure that there are scores of
thoughtless and careless persons who
not only will not hesitate a second to
call your attention to failures, of all
types, but also seem to go out Of their
way to do it.
Why they do this Is another question.
The fact they do 1t Is apparent to all.
The admonition to keep stif upper lip
is largely due to these people, who insist
on pleasantly calling your attention to
your worst features when, by refraining
from such tactics, they might add q
great deal to the pleasure OF life by no
more exertion than saying nothing at all.
n -
Short stories will display to the candid
reader many failings of his own. In that
he by no means could take part In one,
as character, unless he became inf
nitely witty and quick on the trigger
in conversational way, in addition to
possessing other desirable characteristics.
II most Of us, by some queer magic,
were suddenly injected into the course
OF an average short story, such as one
may read in any magazine any day,
surely we would knock the plot higher
than the proverbial kite.
When the lovely heroine looked up
into our eyes, we would think of nothing
at all to say, except maybe wasn't the
moon lovely, or the mosquitoes bad
tonight?
When the villain said a few insulting
things, we no doubt would Stammer
and blush before we socked him in the
jaw, as we hope we would, but nobody
could be sure, least Of all ourselves,
because we would not act exactly after
the best short story manner; of that
we are sure.
Most of us would have to remold our
lives to get place in story. A berth
in novel might be easy enough, because,
in the main, characters in the longer
works of mans imagination get chance
to act more like human beings. But
in the short stories you have to be so
terribly clever, and talk up so instantly
to the fashionable lines of the clothes
worn that the mass of humanity have
no place in them at ALL
Probably that accounts for the plain
fact that ordinary human beings seldom
make" the short stories. Despite their
infinite variety, all the heroes and
heroines and lesser characters of short
stories have one trait in common-they
are able to say just the right thing at
just the right time.
Even when the author thinks to write
about commonplace human beings, he
invariably makes them slip up in this,
that he allows them to be just a mite
too clever in their repartee.