TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14830, 22 November 1913, Page 10

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Thoreau's famous sojourn A Modern in "Walden, even the Cave-man, strange oxploits of

more recent "simplelifers," seem,somewhat colourless in the light of the experiment recently carried out by a Boston artist, Mr Joseph Knowles. Mr Knowles felt a yearning for the primfeval, and he was resolved not to do things by halves. So for two months he resolutely turned his back on civilisation —including in that comprehensive term all the comforts, devices, and conveniences of life which the human mind has conceived since the Stone Age and went into the deep woods of Maine to lead the life of a prehistoric cave-man. Clad in bear and deer skins, and carrying in a pack clung over his shoulder a fire-machine and othor tools ho himself had fashioned, he sought out a retreat remote from the unwelcome operation of the game laws and other undesirable reminders of civilisation, somewhere in the boundary mountains of Canada, near Lake Megantic. "Wh-jn he came back to tho twentieth century, on October 4th, 1913, he had lost 30ib ,in weight, having dropped from 2041b to 1741b. "From head to heel," so a |"New York World" representative described him, "he is scratched and bruised by the briers and underbrush in which he lived for sixty days. He is tanned almost black. Over his neck and arms was a black bearskin, fastened with thongs of deerskin. His feet were encased in moccasins of buckskin, sewed with sinew. On his back was a knapsack of woven bark, filled with trophies from the forest, and slung over his arm his bows and arrows. Sheathed in buckskin, a crude knife of horn hung from his belt." Such was the figure which appeared before the startled inhabitants of Megantic. First thing, Knowles went to a hotel and flung himself on a bed, a "real bed." Next he demanded a cigarette, and later he drank a glass of milk with tremendous relish. During his term of "prehistoric" life, ho had lived mostly on fish, deer, and bear meat, spruce partridges, and berries. The eating, clothing, and firing problems, he said, had caused him little trouble. "What had nearly driven him crazy at times was the "awful lonesomeness." The effects of a few million years of gregarious existence are not, it appears, to be so easily shed. A modern may still survive for a time the physical conditions under which tho palaeolithic man had to live, but the silence and the solitude of the age-old forests he can no longer endure.

Most nations are proud of A their men of genius, but in National many cases the fame of Idol. these great men does not permeate the masses. A good many labourers in Warwickshire have probably never heard of Shakespeare, and it might not be difficult to

find Americans who have never heard of Washington, or, at any rate, know nest to nothing abou. h' m - c supreme example of a great man who lives in the hearts of all c P^f 10 seems to be Verdi, the famous Italian composer, whoso centenary was celebrated this year. A writer i* l th ® "Daily Telegraph" says that it would be difficult to find a dozen people over the age of ten, from Lombardyto Sicily, who are not familiar with hundreds of his melodies. The mother 6»ngs her child to sleep with "Home to Our Mountains," and the wife welcomes her husband with the opening bars of a love duet from "Rigoletto," "Thank God, they cannot still my voice," said a criminal on being sentenced to imprisonment for life. "I can sine Verdi's melodies in my cell." it is by no meaas uncommon to hear prisoners chained together seeking consolation in a Verdi chorus. "Verdi is the only individual over whom and tho sole subject about which all Italy is united. There is no such thing as a discussion about Verdi in the land of his birth. The Italians do not look upon him as a person to be defended, but as someone to be understood. They would as soon think of apologising for their sunshine and blue skies as to admit the possibility of there being two opinions about Verdi—'ll nostro Verdi,' as they lovingly call him.' This is not quite correct, for there are cultivated musicians who realise Verdi's limitations, and appreciation of Wagner is spreading among the educated classes, but it is true of all the rest of the community. Naughty children are punished by being forbidden to hear Verdi's music, and sometimes the threat goes forth; "Unless you behave well and learn your lessons, you'll be sent to Germany and made to listen to Wagner." The writer tells of the mingled astonishment and disgiist "of an Italian, when an .fchiglishman, listening to a band selection in a square in Rome, asked what the music was. " 'Ernani' —but surely you know it —Verdi." The Englishman explained that "Ernani ,, was seldom, if ever, performed in England, wiiereupon tho Italian delivered a homily on tue subject, begging tho Englishman to set to •work on his return to educate English people in this respect. The incident was talked of for weeks in Roman-cafes. Music is part of the very life of Italians, and not, as with AngloSaxons, a luxury.

Probably no Protestant A Church festival in any Queer part of tho world is more Collection, curious uian a Kaffir harvest thanksgiving. It is a mixture of a white man's thanksgiving service and soiree, with a little of tho exhortation of a camp revival meeting. A missionary, writing in tho "Missionary Eecord," describes one of tho Kaffir festivals held this year, when there was special cause for thanksgiving, owing to tho coming of copious rains after a prolonged drought. Proceedings began at two in the afternoon, and lasted, with an interval for refreshment, until dayoroak next morning. The Kaffir, as a rule, does not give at once, it requires oratory and example of others to stir him to self-sacrifice, hence tho length of the proceedings. One of tho senior elders gave a sack of mealies for himself and his family, and added for his wife one penny. As she had taught every Sunday in the Sunday-school for thirty-five years, this was somewhat mean. Some of the European children gave gifts, one of them giving a shilling for which ho had worked, and the best white cock of his own rearing. The sight of these little children brought an old native to his feet, who said this was a beautiful sight, which remindod him of the children who broke branches off the trees and spread them to make a path for the Saviour, and his speech concluded with a gift of a bag ot grain. One method of working on the generosity of tne gathering was tho displaying of the women's "blessing box," on top of which a woman placed a shilling as tie "key" which locked it. This challenge to "open the box" was promptly, answered by a promise of a bag of mealies from one of the men. The proceedings were varied with hymns by native choirs. When the collection, was counted in .the morning it was found to consist of eight sheep, one goat, eight fowls, a dozen and a-half of eggs, fourteen pumpkins, 32 bags of mealies, a Dag' of beans, 34 packets of mealies, beans, and peas, and £23 12s 4d in cash. Altogether the collection was valued at £50, a very creditable effort for a native community. A good many clergymen in British communities would be glad if their parishioners gave proportionately. In her "Bush Days," The Miss ,Amy E. Mack Out-door writes to praise the bueh Breakfast, breakfast, without ex-

perience of which no person can learn the full joy of life. ' 'Lunch and tea wo have all eaten in tho open many and many a time, and have all enjoyed to the uttermost; but the morning moal oaten under tho gum boughs, while the day is yet young, ia unlike any other meal Trnown on this prosaic earth." According to tradition, the correct way to uegin the day is with a silent meal, "attention divided 'between the bacon and the newspaper, not a smile for anyone, ami not a word beyond a 'pass the butter, please,' or similar phrase." But we are assured that families active enough to take bag and billy, and lay their cloth in the wild wood, will find the silent and unsociable mood is left behind, and miracles have.been worked over the simplest eatables. "Hardboiled, eggs" have an ambrosial flavour with billy tea; fresh crusty bread with hedge-plum jam is food for the gods, when blue orchitis bend towards --.; and rosy apples are a heavenly fruit when tho sunbeams dance upon them through a red-gum's leaves." a novelist recently described an agreeable meat taken on Hampstead Heath. It consisted of cress sandwiches, blackheart cherries, and coffee—a strictly vegetarian, but not unattractive menu. But when in one of Miss Braddon's novels the heroine rewarded a young man's early-morning efforts in teaching her to row, by giving him an open-air breakfast by the river, ambrosial bread-and-honey failed to satisfy him, and he enjoyed much more the occasion when she kindly brought a spiritlamp and added a scent of frizzling bacon to the morning air. 80, too, in "The Successor," breakfast for two on a hill-top was a triumph when something frizzled in a diminutive fryingpan. "I didn't wait to cut it thin," the girl apologised. "Tnick or thin," said the man, "it was an inspiration." There is a very good late breakfast-

or early lunch ?—«aten by Corinthia and her brother, in "The Amazing Marriage." Spread on a bank of green shaded by a chestnut-tree, the provision disclosed a bottle of wine, slices of meat, bread, hard-boiled eggs, and lettuce, a ehippnd cap to fling away after drinking the wine, and a supply of small butter-cakes known to be favoured by Corinthia. She reversed the order of the meal, and began upon a cake. These far-away breakfasts do not mention the lizards or the big ants which Miss A. Mack can count amongst the charms of her Australian meal. "They just run about ousily, waiting until we have finished, and do not worry us too persistently." But here, to some people, bush breakfasts fall short of perfect joy. Tncy mean, too often, sand in your food, and midges in your cup, and too many insoctbrenkfasters at work before you on every dish. The simple townsman makes shift quito happily at homethough even he may bless the new architecture which provides him with a means of change from breakfastroom to breakfast verandah.