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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 235, 2 April 1912, Page 4

CONCERNING ANNIVERSARIES. The great world still persists in "spinning down the ringing grooves of change," and yesterday's smiles and yesterday's tears will never come over ( again. Looking backward, there is more than** suggestion that we are becoming materialistic as the ages progress, and that the precedents of our fathers are being cast into the limbo of forgotten things. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the observation of anniversaries. Yesterday, for instance, was All Fool's Day. But how many people remembered this all-important fact and profited by it? Not many years ago the average man and the average child—and on the first of April the terms used to be synonymous—were wont to gird up their loins and sally forth to their work and to their labor with a firm conviction not to 'look behind," and to abstain from answering telephone calls. Even the dogs, with intuitive instinct, sought the darkest recesses of their kennels to protect their tails from tin cans, and until the witching hour of mid-day life was a burden of suspicious and a tremulous round of hidden artifices. We are too sensible now to be silly, unless, as the advocates for the retention of picturesque custom put it, we are too silly to be sensible. Certain it is, however, that the frivolous atmosphere that used to pertain to the first of April has given placs to a haughty and dignified sedateness that frowns upon such follies as used to delight a generation ago. Nor is this desuetude confined to the Feast of All Fools. St. Valentine—that arch-lieutenant of the great god Cupid—with his loving messages and his friendly insults—has long since joined the great majority, and his memory is now more honored in the breach than in the observances. Guy Fawkes, too, has crossed the Styx, and his pyrotechnical annivef sary has fizzled out like a burntout bush fire. There are no longer any Lob-lie-by-the-Fires to clean our hearths and sweep away the cobwebs while we sleep. The work is done instead by trim housemaids, who work at a union rate of wages. If the fairies continue to dance the mushrooms up in rings a modern generation simply regards the mushrooms not as seats for the elves but as produce for the breakfast table. The mysterious happenings of Hallowe'en have been dragged into a scornful and contemptuous publicity, and the old-time self-respecting ghost, who was accustomed to clank his chains with a fidelity to his mission in life that would be a lesson to even a modern-day business man, has gone out of business in disgust. Of all the anniversaries Christmas Day alone remains, and, thank goodness, this quasi-religious celebration bids fair to retain its hold upon humanity for generations to come. Still, we elders grudge our losses in other directions. It is sentiment that greases the wheels of life, and it does the world no harm at times to bask for a little while in the glamor of romance, and to play for an idle hour with the children of tradition. It is not sportsmanlike to be always sane and sober, and we grudge the departure of these simple spirits, who have added -to the sum of life's happiness by the sheer irresponsibility of their frivolling. We are in danger of becoming a nation which will subscribe to the heterodox doctrine that Mary never had a little lamb, and will declare that Old King Cole was a confirmed pessimist, and was never a jolly old soul. Why, the children of to-day even lie awake in a conspiracy to trap Santa Claus as he descends the chimney, instead of drifting off to slumber in the happy confidence that their fairy godfather will attend to their requirements. As to the storks, who bring the babies, they have gone out of business altogether. Against all this we protest. Castles in Spain may be the moat ephemeral of structures, but there is a joy in building them, and whatever adds to the sum of human happiness and human pleasure makes for the virility of the race. The thoughts of youth arc long, long thoughts, but at the present rate of progress we bid fair to make our babies old almost before they are "lengthened."