DEFENCE OF THE HUMDRUM.
I have wondered many times why such an uncomfortable quality in ->thcrs as love of adventure is so luly exalted, while stay-at-home folk occupy so poor a place in public esteem. Yet on the latter, the quiet workers who toil for the comfort of the hive, depends much of human lappiness. "Better to be an eagle than a stalled ox,' ; cry the heroes, but who (without considering the feelings of either creature) would not rather have a single ox in his stall or anywhere else than a dozen ragles ?
If everybody yielded to his or her love of adventure and despised the humdrum routine of life, the earth would be a miserable place. I once had a cook, who, after a few weeks of exemplary conduct, failed one morning to send in breakfast at the usual time. I went out to see what nad 1 happened, and discovered her returning from an early swim in the river. '"I felt I must die if I didn't do something else instead of frying 3aeon," she explained. "I was that sick of it." I sympathised with her. but realised I should shortly have to part with her, coffee and bacon at a certain hour in the morning being recognised necessities in a well-order-ed household. Then, would we enjoy ourselves if postmen, in their yearnings for a wider sphere, failed t 0 deliver the letters ; if char-women became too high-minded to sweep and clean ?
I asked a little child to define a hero. "A man who goes out' to see the world, then comes home for a feast," was his answer. But what if ft*e were all born heroes, and refused to cook the feasts for one another ? Beth heroes and drudges may be wanted in a perfect state of society, but the heroes need not so persistently despise the drudges. They ought to be grateful to them merely for the contrast they afford to themselves, for if there were no plains how could we recognise the mountains ? Rosaline, i* Black and white."
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King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 470, 1 June 1912, Page 7
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343DEFENCE OF THE HUMDRUM. King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 470, 1 June 1912, Page 7
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