QUEER SIDE OF THINGS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4523, 5 February 1923, Page 2

QUEER SIDE OF THINGS.

THEN AND NOW. (By “Septimus.”) Many are inclined to think, to the history that is literally pumped in thepi when at school, that human nature has undergone a vast change since the days of Cicero and other “ancients'.” It hadn’t, really. People are just the same squabbling crowd that they always were, and always will be. In public affairs there was more pomp and ceremony, but in every-day life, ami particulaily in the home, there is little changeThe surroundings' are how “modern,” but .the humans still have tlieijr “differences.” The kinks have not been eliminated by the passing of time. J: may be, of course, that the actual environment that most couples find themselves compelled to spend their life in has a similar cantankerous influence to -that of ages ago. After all, the four walls repiain, though now decorated with cheap wallpaper. And people still eat stew, and come home and grumble at cpld tea, or the fact that Hie bath-water is' not hoc. How queer it is .that married bouples. of to-day still fight over such trivialities just as they did in the days of Cicero. Have you eveg- noticed that “great” men are frequently hen-peck-ed ? Their “bonnie wee hens” of courtship days are sometimes found to have developed in shrews under the influences of marriedi life. Cicero’s married life was not happy. To some it. would have been quite intolerableIt is not improbable that the domestic life of Cicero will one day be comprehensively illustrated by a book that is now being written by one of the leading men of New Zealand. Some few years ago I chanced across him in a small Taranaki town, and learn; that he was engaged on a translation of the domestic letters of Cicero. In conversation some of the translated letters were spoken of. One particular paragraph sticks’ in my memory. “I shall be home bn Saturday, but do not say,” said Cicero, writing to his wife, “.that I am annoyed because the bat.h-watqr is cold, or because the stew is burnt.” So the letters continue—the soup is burnt, the tea is cold, the bath-water is not ready. We live in strange times — yet they are a repetition of others. History repeats itself. Life is not a gamble. It’s a certainty, especially if one is married. But .