THE POST-CARD MANIA.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 77, 24 December 1907, Page 3

THE POST-CARD MANIA.

An American woman says very truly - that it .would:-seem some time- that' as grownup people wo : aro.singularly lacking in foresight and prudence. .: • ' ' Wβ; do not learn by sad experience; we fail-to profit by past mistakos; as fast as we' are released from the • consequences of one folly' wo rush headlong and most willingly into tho jaws of another; we may not altogether want to, but other peoplo are doing it, so let'us go with the gang. .',; I ! refer now to the post-card mania now raving, and that' without signs of abatement. ■■' ' \ "• Theso things wo know are trash and tho very worst-sort of trash; our grandmothers in their waxiost of flowers, hairiest of jewellery, most intricate of samplerdom days, never : accumulated any more useless and ephemeral stuff than wo are with tho sending and receiving, the aiding and abetting of this postal-card business; yet wo aro told that the thing is in its infancy. i Say. 'that wo have, after many years' scraping and. saving, gone to Europe and there arrived - at one of its capitals with souls palpitating to see its world-famous treasures; wo are tired, .ft may be, and nervous from travel, and go to bed. What, 1 ask you, what is our last tliougiit at night and first one in the morning? Is it , of cathedrals, ■ public parks, -or pictures ? No; it. is of postal cards! '■'■ ' • '■ .'■ • Wevmust buy them,;, must dispatch them, must get-'them off our minds! ..Wo cannot bo happy till we do. Think of all tho ox? pectant ones at homo, waiting with famishing hearts for their • postal cards! What traitors, what worse than traitors, ara we, selfishly, spending ..-money for-pleasure whilo thoy : work, did •wo forget : to send them some , small chrbmo with a fow words fran-tically-.oxtracted from an overburdened biain appended thereto! Words which aro, as a general thing, tho purest essence of silliness and inaninity. ' . -

But.we all do it. I am never moro unhappy than whon; confronted by a dozen or two of these missives awaiting signatnro and address. I hate myself, I abhor my task, I..rate myself the veriest moral coward'for giving-in to the thing; hut wriggle as I will, it must be-done; and so with dishevelled hair, palo brov,-, inky fingcra and a tongue worn to n'frazzle by stamp imioilngo, 1 somehow at last get'them done and tako to bed, exhausted. My friends receive them as I myself havo received them —with;.a smile perhaps and a jcoond spont in scanning them —then to filo thorn away—for that is another feature of it. We must treasure them; we hare a feeling of .responsibility over the matter. Could we not produce each and' every ono rccoired at: instant demand wo could fool ourselves all sorts of a traitor, and so on end on the endless chain progresses. _ The only hope is that another fad will rieo up soon beforo this ono crushes us to wrt.h. ■.■■■. ■ ■ •