ABOLISHING THE DROPPER-IN

Evening Star, Issue 22444, 15 September 1936, Page 12

ABOLISHING THE DROPPER-IN

' I abominate pepole who, uninvited. ring my hall door bell. Surely we all . Abominate them? But if we do, why do they go on doing it? The answer is, because they are thick-skinned, writes aKte O’Brien in the ‘ Daily Mail.’ It never once in. the course of their sociable and chatty lives crosses their well-protected minds that they are ■ perhaps to come of us abominable. They are as care-free as that—and quite startingly old-fashioned. If’or they seem never to have heard of the telephone, or of the sixpenny telegram, or ye olde penny post card. ■ They are an amazing- tribe. ilo wdid they get that way ? Mostly through idleness and lack of “ resources,” as Jane Austen’s Mrs Elton would say. Often because they • are Nosy Pakrers. But always- beeause they lack imagination , They drop in when you may be - working, ma yeve nbe riding a rare tide of inspiration; or you may be talking, in full content, with someone whom you invited to come to talk with you. Well, they’re delighted to find you in—and out. They just thought they’d like a chat. So there they sit, and you make the mtea, you pass the cigarettes, you answer up. And the clock goes round and roud, and when at last they go, after “quite a visitation,” you are in a serious' condition of rage and pervous prostration, and it’s even money you don’t get to sleep for hours with fuming against them. Privacy can never have been so vital to us as in this era of movement and noise. Never was it more necessary to respect it and preserve its ancient rights. We work harder, or anyhow far greater numbers of us work harder, than in our fathers’ day; we seem to think we need more pleasure, too—but we can choose now among many nostrums. Our fiats, our bungalows, our mansions must be, as never before, let us insist, our castles. Not that they can ever be that. There are the greengrocer’s boy and the man to read the meter. There are the little nuns from th old men’s homes, and the lady who wants you to have your photograph taken, and the waif who wants to do your typing, and the frozen-looking youth who wants his fare to Birmingham. There’s the coalman, and the nervous clerk who “ ventures to call about that small account.” If we have suffered them all, as we must, and never a cross word, hqve we at day’s end to tackle the droppersIH£ caAßOit _