MODES OF THE MOMENT

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 171, 15 April 1933, Page 7

MODES OF THE MOMENT

Passing Notes by Jane Wellington, April 14. Dear Mavis, — , , , . Someone said to me the other day: “Why do the people who trave in trams look so dull and stuffy and resigned? Can there be so many people in one city whose lives are colourless and drab, as if the blessings of drudgery were the only ones they knew?” Well, I travel a lot.in trams, so I was interested; and after a day s observation I came to the conclusion that you will never see anyone who looks anything except sad and bored and utterly depressed in a tram, because that is the expression naturally induced by the environment. Its not a real condition, but just an accident of self-conseiousness and habit. Could you imagine a situation more truly alien to the reserved British soul, whose individual mind and body is kept sternly aloof from its fellowbeings unknown to him socially, in response to a sort of inherited jungle law? There they are, two rows of entire strangers, sitting more closely than lovers on a park bench, facing each other, and endeavouring to appear at least mentally detached. A perfectly normal, alert, intelligent woman, taking a seat-j-squeezing into an allotted sixth of a seath—opposite a face whose eyes stare imperturbably just above on to one side of her hat, naturally assumes the same attitude of mental vacancy, and the lines of her face respond. I challenge anyone to fight against the atmosphere. The ordinary woman—or man—simply looks out of a strip of window between two heads as the person opposite is doing, and watches the shops and houses swimming by.< Presently a; trance-stage is reached, in which the quickly-moving. squares and angles lose all definite shape, and the mind becomes; a blank. The tram-face is the result. A more uncomfortable form of progression could not well be devised, and yet it has its fascination if you can resist the mesmerism of streamlines, and learn, to see people without looking at them. There are moments when the job of a tram conductor, punching the tickets of thousands of different personalities every day, percolating through the maze of straphangers, might seem one of the world’s prizes. I’ve often wondered what our tram conductors think of the new hats, and whether they prefer the little wool caps perched on marcelled heads, to the flatter surface of strain or stitched material? They should know more of hats than most, of us. Hats—and hands. The gloved hands of women, the uncovered fingers of men and children. To. be one of the lucky people whose work takes you train-riding four times a day in the busy hours, is to have a source of every-day entertainment to which the admisi. (>n is astonshingly small. For there are all sorts of interesting people under the hats and behind the masks, if you take the trouble to look for them; you mustn’t judge them by the expression on their faces. There’s the woman who likes men, for instance, and can't help the upward gleam of “rocking-horse eyes” as she holds her ticket to be clipped: the large aggressive woman, who squeezes herself defiantly into the inadequate space vacated by a polite young thing with a modern figure, and the shy one who would rather stand than reveal to a cruel world the fact that she is unable comfortably to squeeze into the vacant space. There arc practical little shop assistants who probably live at the far end of the line, and, .entrenched behind an absorbing book, are blind to the sight) of older women-standing. And who blames them, the girls who are on their feet: from nine to five-thirty? Certainly not the older woman who stops to think. The evening trams are full of worn-out youngsters, and many a time I’ve wished we could put a huge house up in the paddock where “Gar’s Cottage” stands beneath its kind old trees, and send them all off for rest and quiet sleep. And there’s an enormous amount of kindness shown to old people, to those w kom infirmity renders slow in their movements, and to mothers wit>h young children. The kindness of crowds, the patience and good humour, are proverbial. . 1 su PP < ’ se you-will •be at home this heavenly weekend, while the citv goes to call? The campers went forth at daybreak this morning, with heart's set for the joy of the open road—the great open spaces, where men are men, and the tenti leaks every time it rains, as Leacock says. Here's honing the glorious blue of our sky is reaching north and south. Mith love. ' Yours, .TANK.