A DIFFERENT DRUMMER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 253, 24 October 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

A DIFFERENT DRUMMER.

(By DR. DON D. TULLIS.) Henry David Thoreau once said, "If a man doesn't keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer." These words are his autobiography. He was different from other men. He marched to the beat of a different drummer. For years he lived alone in a little hut in the woods at Walden Pond. Thoreau did not sense the rhythm of the mob. He heard another tune played in a different tempo and his feet caught step with another drummer. That is the secret of genius. Unusual men do not follow with the pack. They do not react to the psychology of the crowds. They do not follow the blatant bugles that direct the popular parade. They are very much out of style, but they are the doers of great deeds and the builders of world civilisations. Most people keep step with the mob drummer. He dictates their every action. He is the father of fads. He sounds the tempo and millions of women eagerly don the ugliest hats ever made by a designer. Again he strikes his drum and ten million automobiles appear fashioned on similar lines. Another time his tattoo means a piece of fur tied to the radiator cap of every nian's machine. Mob drummers make monkeys of men. They who get their tempo from the times in which tliey live are never the prophets or leaders of men. To do something new and different a man must hear another drummer, the challenge of whose beat calls to virgin fields and unsealed heights. He must catch a new note in the music of the ages. A roll call of the world's great men and women will indicate the ones who have broken with the conformists of their day and /refused to follow the drummer who sets the rhythmic pace for conventional procedure. Another drummer—Who, is he? Art set the pace for Michelangelo and science caught the ear of Edison. Nature named the tempo for John Burroughs and zeal ordered the progress of Saul of Tarsus. Suffering beat the drums for Florence Nightingale and love measured the footsteps of Jesus from the cradle to the Cross. A different Drummer? Yes. Hear yfe Him! His music will both thrill your soul and guarantee your highest destiny.—(N.A.N. A.)