A HUMAN COMEDY

Evening Star, Issue 18034, 31 July 1922, Page 9

A HUMAN COMEDY

THE TEMPORARY LAP OF LUXURY.

A holiday is a temporary refit in 8 temporary lap of luxury (remarks a writer in an English paper). Many of us who shave ourselves all the year round give ourselves up to the services of the barber in our holidays. We like being served. We like the luxury of the hot cloths and the strange condiments which are applied to our chins. We like even the waiting for turn—the old ‘Punch’ (generally not so old as the dentist’s), and' the local newspaper. which seems to deal with a remote world.

There is the barber’s point of view, too. Ho is a keen student of those of us wba step up, for a brief season, beyond our ordinary humdrum level. He is not deceived) by the new flannel trousers. Even the cigar does not lead him astray in judgment. But ho is a sportsman. Ea discusses golf and motor cars with ready ease. He keeps the conversation on tog plane of the life of leisure. For there are days in hie own life when ho, too, steps aside from the daily round, when he submits to being shaved, when he succumbs to .the suggestion to try what may be called the embroideries of shaving, A busman’s holiday is more philosophic than it appears to be, for bqjbecomes a passenger instead of a driver, and that makes all the difference. Lei & word bo said for the young lady who enjoys this exhilarating change. In ths Tictorion age we used to smile at her. To-day we Took more deeply into things. She is acting her part; but why should sno not act a part? If she is in a shop for fifty weeks, why should she not be the daughter of a baronet for two weeks Wo would let her be Lady Macbeth for an hour- why not let her enter the golden realm of the imagination for two weeks? It gives her a point of view. She, too, has a right to be waited on. She has a right to that particular type of admiration which is too prone to be limited by social standards. It may be that she is more nearly herself in the assumed role. It may be that she is artificial in the long fifty weeks of toil. It may be that she is at home, so to speak, away from home, with the opportunities for changing dresses, with time to think of her very self, with the laying aside of the care of pennies, with precious human relationship aa her dominant interest. It may be that in the temporary lap of luxury she lenmu her true worth.

A Greek once suggested a sort of rotation of social standings. The sweep of yesterday would 101 l in his Rolls-Royce to-day. That puts the Greek theory in a modern setting. Indeed, it is already working. You can see it in operation at Eastbourne- and at Montrose, at Lowestoft and at Llandudno. It is a defensible practice, too, for it means real rest. The days have gone by when the division of human beings is between those who rest and those who do not rest. _ We are dividing life to-day between rest and work. Rost comes first. It is not at all ill to pretend. There is a legitimate drama which is never seen on the stage, and for the space of a handful of days we are all players in it. It is the beautiful comedy called ‘The Temporary Lap of Luxury.’