SUBURBAN PROCESSION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 284, 12 September 1938, Page 4

SUBURBAN PROCESSION.

Down the leafy avenues in the sunny morning, along the suburban highways and by-ways, an unending host of men and women moves briskly on the great day-by-dav trek to the town or city, says a writer in the "Liverpool Post.” Eight o’clock, nine o’clock; still they pour forth from their villa-homes and gardens—click goes a garden gate at the very same minute each week-day—-toward the railway station or the bus stop. A motley throng; elderly men in precise business garb, smug-faced some of them, grave-faced many another, and here and there an anxiouslooking one, or maybe even harassed; young men with lighter step and freer garb, -not yet overburdened by work-

aday responsibilities; young women equally free of anxiety —or, at any rate, with no sign of too much thinking in their beautifully groomed, radiantly fresh appearance (marvellous how thoroughgoing and complete is their preparation, so brief and hurried the space ’twixt waking and breakfast!); and stripling youths, who, having just reached the border-line of serious life look as if they are not bothering in the least about what lies ahead. Yet the purpose of one is the purpose of nil—to wrest a livelihood from the granite face of the great rock commerce and industry, that lies yonder in the very centre of the hurly-burly. Some may be. dreading the office task awaiting them, others may be abnormally concerned about the ivelfare of the homo they are leaving behind them until far-away evening, and still others oppressed by the sense ,of their futility, their misfit state that makes them long passionately, for another sort of career, somewhere else. But somehow, stubbornly rebellious or unhappy though individuals here and there may be, the instinct to adapt ourselves to the conditions in which fate has placed us makes all but the extreme case tolerable. And if with this toleration comes the realisation that we have, after all, our health and strength and the will to be joyous, then it must be with a sense of exhilaration that we join that suburban procession, a procession old as the oldest city, vet new everv morning.