Sketcher.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 367, 21 May 1903, Page 7

Sketcher.

CONCEBNING TWO-TBAGEDIES. fN old days, in the early part of the the just past century,, aye, even up to the present, many children came into the world with their lives "already mapped..' out - for tham. ThejrL tfatners:assumed the paths they were to tread, the family traditions they were to fulfil; they were Leven .betrothed £in the cradle—te» unite' adjoining estates, or ..because ~their fathers were friends, A remnant of this form of, the old patriarchalism still obtains, and often causes family tragedies I-3-cas6s.;where*a son;;.or)daughter who refuses to stifle his or her own instincts and inclinations is cast off and perhaps dislnht lited—for no better reason than a refusal to carry out the parental wishes regarding a choice of occupation/ It was such a refusal which caused that awful tragedy in New York recently when Worthingtoa I'ord shot his brother, Paul, ;fche "novelist,- and then sent a bullet through his own hearty A,n autpcratic, irascible father had dt»reed the future, of a son who insisted on following his own inclinations. He ..was in copse quence denied the'education given his brother's; and finally disinherited because of his determination to live his own life, and this, notwithstanding the fact that he was a man of honor >nd repute in field. IThfe"injustice hi 3his-fftth»i's.will* weighed upon him; his brother's refusal to share the property with him embittered him: he brooded over his wrongs, and we' know the end. • The root of the fault lies.; :at the door ofithe tyrannical, father, who would allow hiß Bon no choice between a life-work utterly repugnant to him and disinheritance. 'QtfflVT&l. 11} ." ■)

Happily, in this age and in our country, these arbitrary old parents are not as common as they once were, but they are still frequent enough to cause misfits in life. We find a boy with the musical

temperament made oyer into a bank clerk; one whose linclinations are* |oward medicine or sur>erjf>js held to the farm; he who delights in fruits and plants is urged into law. Thousands ate living, to-day, not the liveV decreed thein by nature, not the.lives fer which their soulb cry out, but the ; lives in which they are hcld.-by parental olltgatibn or that' tether Mty& force, environment, which holds 4hem;'in its remorseless grip, a man or woman ban meet-more bravely and more patiently the compelling force of Fate, Circumstances, Environment—call it; what you will—" which bars him from' his heart's desire than the opposition of his parents, or hie family. The first haa not quite the same sense of irritation, ofeexaßperation, that is roußed when one will.'bends before I another without, after allyrecogniaing the: | right of interference. <• •, . ,%.- * ; When Mrs Patrick Campbell was'.here I went to see ' ]n>gda' a~play that on this very theme. The critics, it eeetiis to me, let the very?.'kernel of the play escape them. Sudtrmann, the author, did not set out ; to picture the power of good influences, of filial love/exerted upon an unwilling, unrepentant Magdalen and finally conquering her., stubborness and evil instincts, His real" purpose was to portray revolf; of an artistic temperament against unwarranted re-, preseion, against an arbitrary authority s that dwarfed individual aspiration, a woman's escape from a domination that was death to her real life. That 'ishe sacrificed her -womanly purity in that escape is not the necessary rosult of her revolt, but a consequence of .having lived' under authority that gave her no life experience, no fannlf.v nf rfln'ntn.fini» Via

real strength or knowledge other own.' r The father loved his child. Her desertion nearly broke his heart.- But he required of her an obedience .that placed her whole life in-his hands, left her no of thought and: action. M 3& a marriage for her. that was ;utterly repugnantr-one that .would have imade a girl with powerful musical "tendencies, full :of yearnings for the world, its pleasures? its: luxuries, and lW. natural love for joy and gayety, the wife of a village pastor, and, as Bueb, doomed '■ to an eternal round *of distasteful charities and care 3. She ran away from home and entered upon a career that had its triumphs and .successes, but the road to them led through storm and stress. Wh;n a longing to see her own people brought her back to the little German village and its she fiads with hef home tthe vt |ame inflexible, arbitrary discipline ; frdnt fled. He tells her that he life in future. *I will assume my old authority, my daughter/ He expects this woman grown, thi3 queen of the stage, whose experience of life outweighs his own, this singer with the world at her feet, to give up all that she has achieved and return to the harrow life of a bourgeois home in a dull little German village., It is the revolt against the pettiness, the bigotry, the blighting, repression of her father's house, not the reluctant submission of the fallen woman to the purity and sympathy of a home life that Sudermann endeavours to set before us. >,r ; < ;Itts, I think, something of this feeling, that obtains in the children we send away to be educated, when they return and find \ the home unchanged. They have been compelled to rely on themselves, cast as it were upon their own resources. They have seen a larger life, They have obtained broader views, and have seen how other people do things. If the atmosphere of the home is inelastic t if everything must remain as it is because it has been so for years; if they must surrender themselves to an authority and an obedience thay feel they have outgrown, depend' upon it the young people will bo restleless and discontented. But bear thisvin mind : It is not the education that makes them eo, but the unprogressivesess of the home—and their parents; *, *■' ; - • ; ' Don't, then, force a child's inclinations. If he shows no special preference for any aTrhcatiohit is wall to direct his thought toward'orie'fsr which he seems best fitted, or which opportunity seems to indicate. Sometimes a youth ir his inexperience selects a pursuit which later experience renders distasteful and he abandons it for, one more congenial. ' Sir Walter Besaht was one of these. He studied for the ministry and r/aohed the very eve of ordination wiienhe drew back. Six years, later ! e gava himself to literature—the inari's, not the boy's choice. It was a •wider knowledge of life that threw him into the right groove. ;iJfCause your child fails to realize your desires for him, or to walk in the path you .have appointed for him, don't be unhappy or grieved or resentful. Don't be responsible for a misfit—the wrong in-, dividual married to an occupation Bemember, we have our destinies laid upon us.