ON BEING A HERMIT.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5380, 28 January 1929, Page 3

ON BEING A HERMIT.

is IT (WOB TO LIVE ALONE! PROS AND CONS TOUCHED ON. The following article by Hamish Marlaren will be by a large number of men who live a hermit life during the first month of the year (writes, “Spectator” in the Waikato Timep) : — Lately I have become—not for the first time, but perhaps more deliberately than-on previous occasions— a hermit. I am .now wondering whether I shall continue to bej a hermit for a loing time, or not: whether, if anyone should- come asking my advice, “ Is it a g od thing to be a hermit, to live alone I shall be able to answej* him with a dear conscience, “ Yes, it is,” or not. The point is an unexpectedly difficult one for ■decision.

There is a large number of obvious advantages in bqing a hermit. One may outline a few. of .them. •OBVIOUS ADVANTAGES. Firstly, there is absolutely nothing to get on the nerves in the morning. , This is good. No clatter of milk cans, no ’ rumble; -of. trains, no footsteps, no voices. Nobody knocking with messages about the time, nobody worrying into the rpom with 4-epid'Cups, of tea, nobody doing, anything Peace. And perhaps a starling chuckling in the thorn at the window. The hermit gets up in his own time/and begins the day well. Secondly, if the hermitage had a bath, the hefmit might sing in- it as loud as he .liked. T.his hermitage has no bath. But still there is. the advantage. It could have one. Thirdly, the hermit, merely by virtue of being a hermit, may do what he pleases all day—he may remain in bed, or tur.n. somersaults’ in his garden, or eat his lunch on the roof — 'without so much as a .whisper of comment from the worltl. Not an e;cho. This is, an enormous advantage. Fourthly—wasn’t it Katharine ■Mansfield who first put this notable point on record ?—when he finds a hair in the coffee lie c.a.n be absolutely assured that it is, nobody’s hair, but his own. Fifthly, he sees and hears a grejat deal that, living in a community of people, he must otherwise have missed: in the heaven at night, in the beephwoods surrounding his hermitag.e (one can scarcely be a self-re-specting hermit without living in, or close to, woodlands), in the music, of winds,, in the absolute silence of a windless midnight; in a score of ways noft guessed at by those who crowd together. This fifth advantage, indeed, provides the main and essential reas.on why hejrmits, so to speak, are . their raison d’etre is to be found in it. and it could be expanded almost indefinitely. SOME DISADVANTAGES. 1 merely state it, and turn to a few of the outstanding disadvantages of this hermit life. Firstly, there, is the question of food. A hermit is supposed to live on roots, certainly. Or on toadstools. And then the food question becomes metre complicated. Suppose, for example, that on returning to his hermitage after an absence, the hermit opens his cupboard and finds that it is bare. He may be tired : but hermits have no telephones, no servants. There is no way ■ of procuring, two ras.hers of bac lC *n and an qgg except by walking to the village for them. The hermit walks three miles to the village, and three miles back. On reentering the hermitage, he finds himself without matches. He says, perhaps, a few words, and returns, to the The shop is now c.losed. The hermit must needs make himself a nuisance to strangers with requests for the loan • “of a match. After several dfeappointr ments he is presented with a box and ■ returns to the, hermitage- On arrival he finds, what lie did not notice before, that his paraffin drum is empty. ' He considers lighting a wood fire;, but on looking outside perceives; that it is now raining hard ; he is therefore obliged to abandon this project for want of dry sticks. Possibly then, on re-examining his cupboard-, he discovers a tin of sjar'dines,. This, he thinks, will do for to-night. He proceeds to opepi it with the patent key, which, as usual, fails to work half way through the operation. After half an hour’s haryl labour the hermit monies to the sardines with a penUcKife, and devours them.. He then goes gratefully to bed: If there had been no sardines in his •cupboard the hermit would have had to go to bed half an hour earlier. Secondly, amongst the disadvanthe knowledge, continually in, the hermit’s mind, that he is, open to attac.lt. The hermit may be a bold man, but that makes no difference. He is alone. . A LONELY EXISTENCE.* ( Lying in bed on a wild night, he feels this keenly, finding himself taking stock of his position. Suppose, for. instance, that a cat burglar should chance to pass by the hermitage. The ■ fflian would have nothing to do but -clHsnb in by the hermit’s window, rob k -the> hermit, perhaps brain him, and /-then go away. The hermit may shout as hard as he likes, no one will hear him. Or, if anyone should happen to bq living within earshot of the hermitage, then there is something The hermit must be a false, hermit if he has neighbours. And one has no time for false Limits. A hermit is a man Who lives out of sound, sight, s.cent of his. fellow beings, nothing else. Thirdly, a hermit must wash up his -own disheg, clean his own rooms —but there one touches, upon the main essential .reason why hermits, as it were, are not or not often. In weighing this disadvantage against that essential showing why hepnits ar.e, Is to be found the answer to the question first propounded: Is it a good thing to be a hermit, or not ? The; point is an unexpectedly difficult •one for; decision*