MOMENTS OF INTEREST

Bush Advocate, Volume XVI, Issue 601, 30 December 1904, Page 7

MOMENTS OF INTEREST

MODEEN SOCIETY. Miss Marie. Corolli has followed the Rev. R. 7j. Campbell with an article on the Sunday observance question. The novelist writes in tho London Magazine, and confines her attention to .the society method of spending Sunday. '•Despite the fact." she says, "that the sovereign rulers of the realm most strictly set the example to all their subjects of attending divine service at least once on Sunday, this example Is just the very one among the various leading patterns of life offered by the King and Queen which society blandly set^aside with a smile. For notwithstanding constant painstaking production of exquisitely printed prayer books, elegantly bound in ivory, pilver, morocco leather, and silk velvet, society is not often seen nowadays with these little suggestions of piety in its be-iinged and j be-bangled hands. It prefers a pack, of j cards. Its ears are more attuned to the | hissing rush of the motor than to • the , sound of sacred psalmody. And the dust : of the high road, compounded with the oil stench of the newest and fastest automobile, offers a more grateful perfume to 'l its nostrils than fche perfume of the virginal lilies on the altar of worship. i Autres tem*ps, autres moeurs. People who believe in nothing have no need of prayer. ! A social set that grabs all it can for itself, without a 'Thank you' to either God I or the Devil, is not' moved to praise. Self and the Hour! That is th© jtnotto and watchword of society to-day, and after Self and the Hour what then? Why, the Deluge, of course. And, as happened in olden time, and will happen again; general drowning, stiflement, and silence. "At . thY present interesting period of English history," continues Marie Corelli, "Sunday appears to be devoutly recognised among the Upper Ten as the great 'bridge' day. It is quite the fashion — the swagger thing — to play bridge all and every Sunday, when and wherever possible. During the past London 'season' the Thames has served as a pietuiesqua setting for many of these seventh-day revelries. . Little gambling-patties have been organised *up the river.' and houses have been taken from Saturday to Monday by noted ladies of the half-world, desirous of 'rooking' young men in the sweet seclusion' of their •country cots by the flowing stream' — an ambition fully realised in the results of [ the Sunday's steady play at bridge from | noon till midnight. "Country house -. 'week end* parties this year were all bridge parties. They were | all carefully selected with' an eye to the J main _Kance. The play generally tegiha on Saturday evening and went on all through Sunday up to midnight. One woman, notorious for her insensate love' of gambling, took lessons at 'cheating' at bridge before joining her country-house friends. She came away heavier in purse by .£SOO, but of that .£SOO £150 had been won front a foolish little girl of eighteen. When not playing bridge^ Society's 'Sunday observance' is motoring. Flashing fizzling all I over the place, it rushes here, there, and i everywhere, creating, infinite dust, smell- j ing abominably, and looking uglier than ! the worst demons in Dante's Inferno. ..; w , ] "Dinner parties, with a string band in. j attendance, and a Parisian singer of the 'cafe chantant' to entertain the company afterwards, were once unknown' in EngI land on a Sunday. But such 'Sabbath' enj tertainments are quite > ordinary ■ npw. Nevertheless, though Society's Sunday has degenerated into a, day . of gambling, guzzling, and motoring in Great^ Britain, it-is well to remember that Society in itself is so limited as to be a, mere bubble | on the waters otlife — froth a'pd scum, as it were, that rises to the top, inerelj to be skimmed off and thrown a!side ; in any ! serious national* crisis. The people are the life and blood of the nation, and to them 1 Sunday remains still a 'day of vest.'"