JUNK!

Dunstan Times, Issue 3139, 16 October 1922, Page 7

JUNK!

(liy C. A. Dawson Scott): Is li a tact that tlio English are the greatest collectors of junk, that is, usejess lumber, in the world; or, being on the spot, are we more impressed by their collections than, say. those of the E reach ? At any rate, their capacity for cluttering; up not only their homes hut also their minds ami their institutions is immense. The housewife, shown a piece of slightly damaged china, does not throw it into the dustbin ; she stores it in a cupboaid in cast' she may some day find a use for it. That madness of thrift is perhaps not altogether unreasonable; nbt what can we say for the hanging on our walls of pictures at whicli wo never look, storing of books we have outhrown, tlie filling up of our bouses with antiquated and useless furniture-- this reverence for tilings not because they arc beautiful but because they are ours , Why do we collect and arrange and.

preserve this junk!-* is it because it represents. to us a certain stability, and. wo are only in exceptional cases an adventurous folk? Jake the Chinese wo worship onr ancestors-. We have heen educated to think the ways of our fathers the best possible, and wo are unable to shako o(f this childish faith. The result is that, even as matnie men and women, wo continue to believe that what the ancients made has the curves of utmost beauty, that what, they said is the last word in wisdom. Is not each generation an advance mi the one before, the newest being that most worthy of our consideration!'' h‘i while we reserve with meticulous care not only the good verse of a man like Wordsworth hut also the stacks of rubbish that,he wrote, we shrink from the modern writer who shows any originality. We put the junk in the place he mjght have occupied. I'or junk only too often seems to its a tiling of value, and therefore to he preserved. The results of this point <”i view are sometimes pathetic. A diddle.-* widow without near relatives never leaves her home because she possesses some large urns and trays made ol silver, things she never could or would use. bid which, were she. absent. might be stolen from her. The modern mind :'s fresh and filled with common sense, nevertheless onr laws remain founded on the junk of old precedents. We continue to cram onr children's minds with file pink of useless information, to preserve instil nl inns which, in onr present state of civilisation, are useless and probably harmful. Scrap junk that should he scrapped. In all the world the greatest collee(ms ol junk—-what a reputation!