THE LUMBER ROOM

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 208, 18 September 1937, Page 4

THE LUMBER ROOM

'PAUL PRY."

By

Looking Back. I wonder if there are many who remember as tbey glide down the inclineto the Mohaka River on the Taupo road, the days when the coach used to sway along hehdnd the fast 'trotting horses. Perhaps some of the passengers were nervous till the driver explained that it was necessary to keep the coach away from the korses keels. Then the long pull over the plain.s where one can now travel at 70 m.p.h. in comfoft ..... it was a two day trip in those days to reach the Lake aiid now three hours from Napier. A Sympathetic Buzz. Those who despise the .weather as a conversational opening seem to me to be ignorant of the reasons why human beings wish to talk. Very few join an a conversation in the hope of learning anything new. Conversation should be a sympathetic buzz. Tkat is why tke weather 5 is so useful a subject. It brings people at once to an experience which. is generally shared and enables them, as it were, to buzz on tke same note. Having achieved karmony, they advance by miraculous stages to other sympatkies and, as note succeeds note, a pleasant and varied little melody of conversation is made. — Robert Lynd, Man's Province. Words are man's province, words we teach alone. Wlien reason doubtful, like the Samian letter, Points him two ways, the narrower tke better. Placed at tke door of learning, youth to guide, 1 We never suffer it to stand too wide. To ask, to guess, to know, as they commence, As fancy opeuB tbe .quick springs of sense, We ply tke memory, we load the brain, Blind rebel wit, and double chain on ckain, Confine the thought, to exercise the I breath, And keep them in the pale of words till death. Alexander Popo. I *

Humanly Speaking. Marriage, humanly speakjng, ig a job. Happiness or unhappiness has nothing to do with it. There never was a marriage yet that could not be made a success, nor a marriage yet that could not have ended in bitterness and failure. So much good, so much bad, in tbe Jxusband, the wife, the house, the children, the income, the town, the friends, the health and the assets generally of the new social unit. A little moro hardsMp this year with which to contend, a. little less next. And at the end of 15 years, 20 years' success. • A developed and ripeoied soul, taught where to find happiness, not expecting to gather it out of the air. That is marriage. And life. — Kathleen Norris.

The Yirtue of Ugliness. In London, go to that most interesting museum, the' National Portrait Gallery. There you will find the portraits of all, the men who for the last 400 years have been important in every profession in England. You will be struck by their prevailing ugliness — great Archbishops distinguished schoiars, statesmen, and men of affairs. Ugliness has positive moral virtues. First, the man afflicted with it is ~uy deprived of a too-easy success fii love; this deprivation spurs him all the more eagerly to conquer — h© has only the brillancy of his accomplishments by which to please. Moreov.er, ugliness in a man, if it accompanies strength, almost always prejudices one in its favour. His superiors, ahnost never have a feeling of jealousy towards a really ugly man ; nor are they indifferent to him, either. One remembers unusual features rather than a handsome but eommonplace head. — Andre Maurois. Time Loses its Power. There are moments when time loses its -power and ceases to be; before our hour we. seem to hav© stepped out of ifc and into eternity, jn Which times does not exist, and wherein there can be no relation of time between events. They stand still, or they stretch to in-defhiit-e lengtlis— all, all outside of time, which has oio power upon them. There are those moments when every fraction of every second of every minute lengthens into eenturies, eternities pasabetween minutes. — "The But-terfly Man," Marie Conway Cfemler. A Certain Tweed Skirt, And maybe months and months aftcrwards you open a seldoin Used wardrobe, where old gardening gear and sliabby mackintoshes are kept, and suddenly you are overwhelmed with the scent of buming pear and birch leaves aud yew ; tho lure of the woods calls aloud to you ; you feel the sweep of the winds on tho liills ulternatiUg with the grcy-blue bonfiro smoke; the cramped towxx vanishes, and you are free in the open spaces onco more. And all because a certain tweed skirt, of a light gardening coat is hauging in the corlier of the wardrobe. — ' 'Between the Larcli Woods and tlie Weir,1' Flora Klickinan. Said the Spider. He gets his mental exerciso by juinping to conclusions. She is on tlie verge of tears, her favourite perch. He uses statistics as a drunken man uses a lamp-post— for support ratlier tlian for illumination. Keep your eyes open before marriage , half shu-fc afterwards. Various. Authors.