DON'T BE A FOOL.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4584, 9 July 1923, Page 3

DON'T BE A FOOL.

(By Dr. Frank Crane.) A fool is one who has no feeling of the future. He is "not a criminal: he is not a child. It is not evil that ails him: it is arrested development. The child , wants everything now. To-morrow is vague to him, and- has no appeal, ' He wants to stuff himself with green apples,, and refuses to consider the consequent gripes. And the gentleman in the dress shirt who says ‘‘he wants' what he wants when'he wants it” is nothing but a child. When a child grows up and doesn’t grow up he is called a fool. The best pant of anyone’s life is the future. Ht is that which determines the quality of the present, and gives significance to the past. Tomorrow is the sky of toj-day, and it is the sky that gives light and beauty and warmth to (the earth. Happy people live in the future — really happy people. He is a much more dominant factor in the joy of life than gratification. In the old question they used to debate in the high school: “Resolved, that there is more pleasure in anticipation than in possession,” the affirmative has it. The fool slaughters the goose to get the golden egg. Hence continual boredom. Pessimism is kept active by fools, for the man who never takes care for the future naturally does not look forward to it. . The secret of the wise-hearted is: “Look out for to-morrow, and to<day will look out for itself.” The standard fool was Esau, who sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. The streets of the city are full of his descendants,, girls buying months and years of wretchedness for an hour of smiles and preening, boys buying floods of shame and failure in a few bottles of passion. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” You flatter yourself, for to-morrow you will live, which is worse than death. To-morrow is the best counsellor, the truest friend. Whoever walks and talks with him will get the best out of to-day. “I will lift mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my strength,” said a sage. The name >f that range of hills ig to-morrow. The fool’s creed is: "I believe in Now. I believe appetites were made to be gratified, and not to be controlled. I believe in having a good time, for I’ll never be young I believe in mortgaging every acre of the future and using the money now. I believe in picking all the blossoms and never caring for the fruit. I believe in looking out for number one. I believe in other peopic being thrifty, seif-ijestrained, and temperate, for my benefit. I believe in luck. I believe no one ever really got on by hard work, but that success is a throw of the dice. I believe the rich are happy. I believe in always being kind, thoughtful, liberal, and charitable—to myself.”