LOSING THINGS

Evening Star, Issue 22627, 20 April 1937, Page 4

LOSING THINGS

TWO KINDS OF HUMAN BEINGS “ There are some of our friends who declare with pride that they never lose a thing. They never return, as other men do, without their umbrellas; they balance their cash to a cent every night; they can .even be trusted with parcels. But there are others, myself among them, who have lost many things—umbrellas, books, cash in every denomination, parcels of every size (I can. remember once losing a clock). What, then, is the difference between the two varieties of human beings? "A bad memory, some will say. But that explanation does not carry us far. I may have a splendid memory and yet lose my umbrella. I remember, as I go on my way, ill kinds of other things —lines of poetry, jokes, the names of statesmen, the tributaries of the Amazon, how to spell Przemysl; but 1 do not remember the umbrella. It is clearly not for lack of memory in general that I arrive home empty-handed. It may even be because I have too good a memory and keep it too busy upon other matters. “ It is more common to ascribe this failure to absent-mindedness. But if my mind is absent from the umbrella, where is it present? And why is it wandering from the umbrella at all? Perhaps because I am not sufficiently interested in it; I am above such things. What does it matter if I get wet, in comparison with that other level with its surpassing interests into, which my mind lifts me? I am absent from the body and present with another world. So my umbrellas enrich the society in which I live. “My absence of mind encourages trade in umbrellas. I get wet, and thereby the hatter and tailor find my visit’ comes sooner than they expected. There is much to be said for the man who loses things, even if he is also one of those who must say with Mr Belloc: “ 'A lost thing could I ever find, Or a broken thing mend.’ “ But there is more to be said. Some people lose things through excess of care and anxiety. They are always putting things into places of security which they forget. A witty preacher, who spoke of the woman in the parable who lost the piece of silver and swept the house diligently until she found it, said she probably .found it in the place where she had put it so that she could not possibly lost it. The mind is certainly strange in its ways, and there is nothing like anxiety for reducing it to despair. Excess of order leads to chaos. I may think so seriously of my umbrella that I shall not think of anything else, and lose it after all. “ I am all for a disciplined life, f thing it is a very serious defect to be absent-minded. Yet this world would be poorer if there were only the efficient folk about who never forget. Did we not read how Sir Isaac Newton was shockingly absent-minded? And was there not another great scientist, nearer to our time, who would ponder in the bathroom whether he had had or was about to have his bath? And did they not fasten his railway ticket by a string round the neck of Francis Thompson when he went to see friends? Still, he wrote ‘ The Hound of Heaven,’ and there are not many of tho quick, efficient, present-minded people who could do that. “ Once more, it seems that we have to take sides. On tho one hand are those who lose umbrellas, and on the other those who do not. I myself lose them. On which side do you stand? Ever yours brooding,” Quintus Quiz, in the ‘ Christian Century.’