CASUAL COMMENTS

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19332, 9 June 1928, Page 13

CASUAL COMMENTS

MEMORIES.

(spxciallt wnn fob rax puss.}

[By Leo Fannuto.]

Mute ie the music, and silenced the laughterl Columbine, Columbine, what follows after? Night's gay illusions lie dead in the dawning Slain by the gray wind that wakens the morning.

Harlequin sees you are only ft mortal Shrinking away £rom Eeality a portal. Hang down your bead like a flower that would elumber, , Mourning lost glamour *nd J°7" without number.

Columbine, Columbine, lone and unfriended Haeten away, for your playtime ie ended 1 Not one "Gasparro" remains to recapture Bliss that enchanted and exquisite rapture.

This is just a cosy carpeUlippery fireside chat for a change. Not one word will be written about politics or politricks,. the butter-slide, the transpacific flight, the lost football match, the sizzles of science, or any other fretful topics of the day. * * *

First of all let us feel right about those introductory verses. They appeared in "Punch" long ago under the heading, "All Ends in Smoke' —a page advertisement of a well-known cigarette, which I have falsely called "Gasparro" as a precaution against free publicity for the makers. The lilt of the lines reminded me of that dear old song ''Kathleen Mavourneen. so that I had to search for an old newspaper clipping about the composer of the melody, Frederick Crouch, who was found dead, a poverty-stricken old man, in a cheap lodging-house with a frayed copy of "Kathleen Mavourneen" in his hands. Here is the last verse to stir the memory of some readers: —

Kathleen Mavourneen I awake from thy slumbers; , ~ , The blue mountains glow in the suns golden light; Oh! where is the epett that once hung on thy numbers? , .. Arise, in thy beauty, thou star of the night. , , „_. Mavourneen! Mavourneen! my sad tears are ToVvnk that from Erin and thee I must It may"be'for years, and it may be for ever; Then why art thou silent, thou voice of my heart? * * . *

To think that after all the heartwarming of that song in the two hemispheres its name "Kathleen_ Mavcmrneen" should come to be used, as a slang term for an indeterminate sentenci of criminals 1 It is said that the publishers made £SO 000 from "Kathfeen Mavourneen," but the composer got more-not in gold or notes o a bank of issue, but .in wealth of the soul. He was a very young man when he read the verses of Julia Crawford, and as he memorised the lines he wove them into a simple melody which a proud classic musician would frown upon as "mush" or "tosh." However aTpeople like things which they can understand-things as easy to.appreciate as a good meal and a glowing .hearth-they Mt that Frederick Crouch had wrought well for them. But he did better for himself. A permanent sense of romance entered his soul, and ever afterwards when the world had forgotten him, he could sing that song in his solitude, and live again those bright moments of his youth when his heart, was won by the maid of a poet's dream. , * * *

There is a world of difference between dreaded "anecdotage" and re-living parts of life in vivid flashes. "Anecdotage" may be merely a more or less mechanical unrolling of the scroti of days, and the narrator may be almost as unemotional in the process as a pianola with its yards of dots and dashes. There is an old saying—rather hard to prove—that a drowning person re-lives the whole of life in a moment or two. For the. better understanding of that assertion, think of the memory as a long line of improssions coiled like the hair-spring of a watch. You know what that spring can do in a moment when it is broken. Or think of the memory as a long string of little fairy-lamps which the current of consciousness can light up. If something—a great crisis in life—suddenly intensifies and quickens the current, may not much of the past rush into the present in a moment P Think of light travelling 186,000 miles a second, and—'but this is getting beyond me, and you, too, perhaps.

Ordinarily wo do not have the big things to work miracles with that current. Indeed, some of the big things —for example the coldness of a banker or the hardness 'of a mortgagee—give us rather a stunning than a brilliant review of our past. However, we have moments when a colour, a sound, a scent brings back an old pleasure or a pain with such startling vividness that years are swished aside and the actual experience is ours again—but only for a minute fraction of a second. One of the little lamps has flashed and gone dim again. We can muse, of course, over the memory, but that wonderful reality, has Bfipped away—to come again another day. •3f ■jfr -3fr

The smell of a circus (for science, happily, has not yet produced the scentless circus) 1 You are a boy again, far back in the days- when pocket-money was not lavish. You nave just found the right strip of unguarded tent—and alter fearful suspense you are free to enjoy theshow. Well, well, your amusements did not cost you much in those times. Whistles made from smooth little branches of green willow, whips of plaited flax, kites for which cement barrels supplied the bows and paling fences the sticks—and the games (fly-the-£arter, bar-the-door, chevy-chase, tip-cat, and many others, which the by-laws of local bodies td-day would ban). *' * *

Once in a long while, when I see the word haberdasher on a country store, I am a small boy again for a moment—totally—in a cross-lane from the old Wilderness road, (which suburban burgesses of Christchurch have changed, alasl for something more genteel). We—three or four frisky ladshave wandered far afield for mushrooms, and though "rosy-fingered morn'' has barely signalled the flight of night we have travelled five or six miles. In a clearing of a high gorse hedge, gleaming with the sparkling craft of the geometrio spider, stands a little shop, announcing that the proprietor is a haberdasher. Mushrooming is interrupted while we ponder on that word and argue about it. We do not know its meaning, but a careful study of the window-display tells us that it is concerned with reels of cotton, tape, ribbon, bone-studs. The word tickles us, and is treasured for application to a dour and fierce old man who forbids us to play in his orchard. A trivial memory, dear friends, mentioned merely to stir your own thoughts about days that are gone. ** * •

A young girl passes you in the street —sixteen or seventeen summers, wearing her own complexion. Rather unflapperish she looks—so you think—and you gaze again. Hey! Presto! One of the little lamps of memory has flashed. Electric trams, motors, radio, gramophones, "movies," all have flerti and you are sped back to youth. The girl is a resurrection or reincarnation of your first love—call her not anything so stodgy as a "double''—and the enchantment of that first shy kiss has come upon you. Ordinary words cannot describe that moment; so 1 with the editor's permission, must ask the jympathetio compositor to do hw

best in an inspired unconventional manner with his keyboard, with only the prompting, of his own heart to guide him. * X * To indicate the power of the mind — not explainable by the highest pashas, pundits, or satraps of science—to give a full flash of the past you can gaze at your flickering fire and think of your friends or enemies—preferably your friends. You .see the faces as clearly as if the distant folk were present, but only for moments. You can bring the same face again and again on to the screen, but if you try to draw it on paper how do you fare? Yes, as the schoolmaster said, "the mind's a wonderful thing."