The Daily News. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22. MISDIRECTED ENERGY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 140, 22 September 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22. MISDIRECTED ENERGY.

11' every seed fell into the ground where it vvomd grow best and reach its greatest perfection, there would be no need for admiring paragraphs about Mr. Pink's phenomenal crop of potatoes or Mr. Green's tremendous pumpkins or Mr. Brown's astonishing onions. If the inborn energy of every man were directed into the channels that would lead it to its natural fruition, what an amazing world it would be! Every day there is continued evidence of misdirected energy. A man brings a carrot along that has forced its way through the neck of a bottle. It lias persisted in growing, no matter what obstacles are in the way. The carrot » not any better for its persistence in overcoming disabilities, but it is a curiosity—and that's all that can be said in its favor. In the great world of men the phenomena of misdirected energy are observable all the time. We meet, for instance, the excellent plumber who is not at all proud of the way in which he can connect a drain, but who is inordinately conceited at his ability to blow a French horn badly or to play draughts indifferently. There is the great explorer, too, who has led his party through a desert to conquest and hates to talk about it, but who will with .bhe most astonishing sangfroid tell palpable untruths about the phenomenal drive he has made at golf. Innumerable instances might be given of the fatefulness of misdirected energy, such as the case of the man who neglected his good boot-making to become a poor amateur politician, the fine cabinetmaker who abandoned his tools, to fight with lip and unskilled pen the "bloated capitalist" who paid him, and the host of misguided folk who are bursting out of their skins to teach the' poor old world all the things it has known "since Adam was a boy." Truth does not alter, principles do no alter, essentials do not alter—but methods vary. Even if we misdirect our energy, we are more useful than if we lack energy. If we are born greengrocers and by chance become politicians, or lawyers or doctors, or anything else, and explain the obvious, keep hammering facts as old as Mount Egmont on the Head, and insisting that the truths of Moses are true and that there is no getting away from the land laws of Leviticus, it i* better for us and the world that we should be using up our steam in this way than in allowing it to blow off by the safety valve. The world was not made by professional persons—the cobblers who stuck to their lasts, carpenters who adhered to their saws, the bushmen who were wedded to their axes. The man who directs his energy solely to the amassing of wealth for himself is generally the'man who is admired, but be leaves little marks on the sands of time, and he is remembered mostly because of his expensive tombstone. The budding author ought to have 1 been sticking lalbels or blacking v bottles, but ne was secretly writing first stories, the incipient Caruso should have been nailing on horse shoes, but, instead, carolled immortal music; the silly little child who mi&ht have become an excellent weaver preferred- his lumps of clay and so became an eminent sculptor; and the little paper boy who forgot to yell his wares in the streets of London misdirected his energy and became Chief Justice of the land which is better worth being Chief Justice of than any other on earth. This is a kind of misdirected energy that makes neither Chief Justices, Canovas, nor Charles Dickenses. Everyone knows the unfortunate girl who is an adept at scones and, who misdirects her energy to the piano and tortures poor old Hemey and the public through the open window. By the time she is seventy she will still be able to make scones, but she will not have outclassed Paganini or even Liszt. And here is the saving grace of misdirected energy. The earth is three-quarters full of mediocrities, and for this the world should be very thankful. If there were no engineers who ought to have been navvies and drapqrs who should have been admirals, and lawyers who might have been almost anything but lawyers, there would be no need for the Russells of Killowen or the Kitcheners of Khartoum, or the Scott® of the i errible. If -we did not misdirect our energy, we would all be so eminent that no one could be found to become chairman of a butter factory company or mayor, of a borough, and, when all is said and done, the world is much better for the butter factory than for the "Spring Song" or even the "bust of Napoleon." Neither the one nor the other is any good to the London market, and the original "Discobolus" wouldn't butter much bread.. Theoretically, the groove idea is sound. In a world of mediocrities the man who plugs away and learns by rote the things that great men have known since the time of Alexander Bucceedsi. His energy is properly directed. He doesn't branch out; his thoughts don't stray, his mind doesn't wander in the field of possibilities, because he "ain't built that way." Here's a Yankee story. Sirus P. Soanso ploughed around 'his land until his brow was furrowed and his heart sick. He never wavered in his ploughing. He directed his energy that hard that if he had run out of the last ridge on earth he'd have "wirelessed" to Mars for a new paddock. iPhineas Q. Wotaisname used to plough, sorter,tired. He'd mostly sit alongside his doorstep whittling a stick. Sirus was dog-tired of Pbineas. Sirus got in his crop good and early and Plineas had no crop, because he hadn't ploughed worth a cent. The grasshoppers came and cleared the crop of Sirus on the same daj that a telegram cam?

from New York saying that the misdirected energy of Phineas in whittling a stick instead of ploughing had earned him twenty thousand dollars for the "patent" he misdirected it on. ■