FROM A SUBURBAN BALCONY

Evening Star, Issue 20510, 14 June 1930, Page 2

FROM A SUBURBAN BALCONY

INTERMITTENT SHINERS A balcony is a place where one can sib either by night or day, and the things to bo seen and pondered over differ accordingly. The darkness gives a multitude of scenes invisible in the light. It is of one of these J want to write just now. • * * * Across the Bay on the opposite side from where I am located I notice every night from my bedroom as well as my balcony an intermittent light. It is for the guidance of ships that come up or down the harbour after dark. It is a warning signal marking some dangerpus place in the passage way. And there it flashes its intermittent light—1, 2,3, 4,5, 6,7, 8,9, ,10—then a Wank for a minute or two—then out and over again for ten seconds, and so on all through the darkness of the night. I have seen these intermittent I lights in various places all around the world. In some the lights are steady; sometimes they shine out at different intervals and in different colours. They are like the movements of an irregular pulse, and yet there is a certain uniformity in them; otherwise they would j bo useless for the guidance of sailors. They can tell from their movements what they represent and where their ship is. * *• ♦, t And so it has been rightly suggested that these intermittent shiners have their analogies in life. There are two kinds of men and women. There are those who are steady, patient plodders. You can depend your life upon them. If they make a promise ;they keep it. If they are given work to do it will bo done precisely, accurately, as you directed. They go by clockwork; they are never before their time, and they are never bchind.it. When the strain of life overtakes you and when others fail or desert they are steadfast. At the battle of Waterloo an officer was given a certain post to hold. Later ho told Wellington that it was impossible to do it. “ Stand firm ” was the reply of the Iron Duke. “ But we shall be killed,” said the officer. “ Stand firm ” i was the only response of the commander. “Right, you shall find us there.” And they did—all dead. And in the battle of life there are men and women like that—men and women that, if they are your friends, they are friends indeed. When others flinch ami falter they abide; when others fail and flee they stand firm with you to the bitter end. These are the people wo applaud. They make history. They aro the salt of the earth. But there is another class of people of an opposite kind. They are seemingly fickle and uncertain. You never know just when you have them or have them not. They are the intermittent shiners. They Hash out now and again in some surprising way, strike a chord that astonishes, and then silence takes them. They are people of moods. Today they are pleasant, affable, joyous; rso-mo;rrow vihey are just the reverse. To-day in their homes they are the 'friendliest of the friendly; a week after you meet them on the street, and their bow is so stiff and their face so frigid that you wonder what you have done to offend them. Mr A. G. Gardiner, in his character sketch of Winston Churchill, says he is like “ a rocket that intermittently dazzles the sky, disappears, and dazzles it again,; Hashes now from this quarter, now from that; is always meteoric, but never extinguished.” On a narrower stage and on a far : lesser scale there are many folks like the brilliant ex-Chanccllor of the Exchequer. . They are everything by turns, and of some of them it might be added that they are nothing long. They will be your loyal friend in some sudden gush of emotion; but in a later crisis, when you look for their aid, they are nowhere to be found. They faro badly in public estimation as in private, and in the end of the day they find themselves often lonely, distrusted by others, and hopeless about themselves.

I want to say a good and comfortable word for these intermittent shiners. There is a sense, indeed, in which the great majority of us belong to that class. The greater number of us have our hours of elation of trial and triumph, of visions and victories. The poet has his days of inspiration, and they are succeeded by days of flatness and commonplace. Tho writer has times when the urge is on him, and ho can scarcely get tho words down on the paper, so swift aiid eager is the working of his mind. The artist paints a picture in some high exalted moments, and then, in the reaction,- ho wonders how ho did it. In moral things it is the same. 'There are days when we face temptations and know the thrill of overcoming them. Life seems clear, and we arc eager to confront its difficulties as the athlete to run a race. And then tho mood passes; it is succeeded by a sense of dullness, stupidity, despair. Wo feel ready to give-up the fight, and are almost indifferent to what happens. Those who suffer from nerves know what these intermittent moods moan. One of the most irritating tricks of neurasthenia is its eccentricity. The attacks and recovery seem to follow no law or order. Sometimes one goes to one’s duty .thinking •that the end-of the day will see tho end of one’s self. And, 10, on tho contrary, the trouble has vanished. Ho cannot tell bow or why. lb will stay away for a time, and life leaps up to tackle work, and in an unexpected moment tho fiend has yon by back or log, ami is crumpling you up again. The grim tragedy is like a cat on the sidewalk playing with a mouse. She nips up the unfortunate little creature in her mouth and holds it there helpless for a bit. Then some whimsical fancy takes her, something else attracts her attention, and she drops, the mouse for a moment. The scared little thing slips away, scurrying off as silently and swiftly as it dares. It imagines it has got tree and is back to light and liberty again. Vain hope! In a bound or iwo I be cat .overtakes it,

and down come tho remorseless paws again. And so tho pitiful little tragedy plays itself out under the direction of the whimsicalities of tho cat. But wc know how it ends. And so is it with nerves that take tho form of neurasthenia. That is how it plays with its victims. And it is not an inapt picture of the drama enacted by multitudes of lives, not only those who are tho victims of neurasthenia, but those also who have to do their work in various spheres of life. They know what it is to have bright interludes succeeded by dark ones, hours of success and exaltation, followed by low spirits and depression, or even despair.

What is one to do in such circumstances? Well, it is good to remember that an energetic and aspiring life may expect such changeful moods of the spirit. If life were all sunshine what would become of the better fruits of tho character? They would certainly not be produced. The ideal life is not that which approximates most nearly to tho measured regularity of a machine. Habits are good when they are good habits. But they are not the best. They tend to reduce life to a level—a uniformity. They register advance, but they do not make it. They may oven become bonds that tie up progress. When they are not used as the swimmer uses a springboard or the vaulter a pole, they induce stagnation. Life becomes a mechanical movement instead of a perpetual aspiration; a man’s reach should ever exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for. Then again, wo must take care not to ijheapen our best achievements when inspiration fails. It is well to expect such alternations of good days and bad days, of fame and of failure, A Japanese proverb says: “Victor, tighten thy helmet strap.” That is to say, look out for what follows upon success. It is in tho hour of triumph that wo are liable to be off our guard and bo overcome by other enemies. “ Then was Jesus led up into the wilderness to bo tempted by the Devil,” Then—when? It was when Ho had just had a great revelation of the spiritual world and His relation to it granted to Him. It is in such hours of high elation that wo need to b© on our guard of tho reaction that inevitably follows. When it comes wo arc in danger cither of not taking them as real, calling them illusions or some other contemptible term, and then sinking dow’n into dull contentment with the low and the commonplace. The end of that is cynicism, and cynicism is tho worst form of criminality, since there is no law strong enough or subtle enough to bring it to punishment. ♦ * * ** When wo are inclined to be bitter in regard to these intermittent shiners it is well to remember that they have their place in tho world. There are many of these coast and rock lights that derive their significance just from tho very fact that they are intermittent. If they were steady they would bo next to useless. It is their steady unsteadiness that makes them of value to the sailor. And on the sea of life on which wo are all afloat the intermittent shinersA\iavo their place. Now andipgain they Hash out and then their light is obscured, and they seem to have petered away. But what then? Our judgment of them must be tempered with mercy. W T © know little of tho causes that are at work in their hidden recesses. Wo are ignorant of the influences, the sickness, the heredity, the cares, the weaknesses that may prevent a steady light being kept up in any given life. It is ours to be charitable in pur verdicts. It is for them to think that they, too, have their part to play in the great place of tho universe. Tho times of darkness, equally with the times of light, have their share in the production of the whole. “The lighthousekeeper on his rock sits in his solitude and watches his little flame. Why does ho not let it dio away as other lights in the distance die when night comes on? Because it is not his light. He is its keeper, not its owner. The great Power that watches that stormy coast has set him there, and ho must bo true. Thus tho insignificant service becomes full of dignity and importance when it is accepted as a post of honour and trust. And tho most wretched moment of one’s existence must bo when ho discovers ho has been trusted and has thrown his chance away.” Ho has thus not only missed his own honour and success, but ho has imperilled the lives of how many more; ho will probably never know till the Pinal Reckoning is made. Ron.