Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 195, 7 November 1927, Page 5

Mundane Musings

On Cabbages and Kings! ( Written for THE iSUX.J The subject matter for cabbages and kings has a wide and varied field. Like Humpty Dumpty’s vocabulary these words mean just what we wish them to express, and though we do not line them up o’ Saturday nights to get their wages, they are very useful words all the same, and we make them do good work for us. The cabbages and kings I mean just now have also a very wide and varied field. It is the subject of our thoughts, and I am wondering if you have ever tried to think backwards. Whether walking, standing, or riding in a tram or bus you may be thinking of just nothing in particular, but you ramble on in your reverie about that nothing in particular until perhaps you realise you are thinking most profoundly that it would be strange if we had three hands instead of two, or some such unlikely thing. But can you trace back your thoughts item by item, and so find out what brought you to that point? You have been rambling on unconsciously, and in all probability you can’t think back to the preceding subject of your thoughts: you have been thinking of your cabbages, and so from cabbages you get by varied routes to kings. We often talk to those we know quite well in much the same unheeding way. We can talk on for hours, but let us try to go back over the ground we’ve covered in just two minutes past, and we are surprised to find it very hard, but a penny paid for every item in our train of thought would, no doubt, make the donor bankrupt. If we have a good imagination we can go for fancied flights of leagues and leagues, and our dearest wishes come to pass. We may have some pet cabbage, or some favoured king of which we think and think. We generally find when thinking of these cherished subjects that our frame of mind is quite content, and we are most probably quite oblivious to what goes on around us. We begin our train of thought perhaps with a subject very far removed from our pet reverie, and yet we ll gravitate toward it through an easy channel of ideas and thoughts until we finally get beached upon its shores: and now I suppose that folks would say we are day-dreaming. We can be so absorbed at times that Ave may pass good friends while thus engaged, looking them straight in the eye unseeingly. In plain English we should be labelled absent-minded, no doubt, but I like to call it by a loftier name and say I’m thinking of my cabbages and kings, and though I can never trace them back to their foundations, I can think ahead quite well, for there’s everlasting scope for travel and romance in my winged barque of fancy. The seas of reverie are always smooth and sunny, and troubles enter not upon those seas when I am thinking thus. Of course, like you, I have my petted subjects, and if my cabbages and kings claimed wages from me o’ Saturday nights I think they’d have big claims for overtime. DOROTHY LITTLE.