LIFE MACHINE-MADE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18457, 21 July 1923, Page 6 (Supplement)

LIFE MACHINE-MADE.

We aro getting perilously like the machine men and women of the newdrama from Prague (writes a contemporary). We no longer write letters, we telephone; we do not learn to play, we stick a mechanical instrument to our piano and work our feet with frenzy: w<. do not, sing; is there not the gramopho;:v { with records of all tho world's artist-;'! We cannot ride or drive a horse, but we sit in a comfort-able seat and manipulate machinery. No one, as yet. has invented a substitute for swimming, but it will surely come, while we can easily forsea the invention of an automatic ''dancingpartner," who will have all tho attractions and none of the drawbacks of his living prototype. And lately we have surrendered "our most human, most intimate accomplishment. Wo no longer tell the children bed-time stories, but suffer tho aerial wires to perform this age-old rite.

Children who train choir father (-while J he is still young) to invent oatisf&ctory bed-time stories may look forward to serine him develop into a novelist of note, | and even a "host Her." At the moment, j to be sure, they are only bent on extract- j ing an : ting tale from their male j parent. For just as mothers mate in- j comparable "tuckers-up," so do fathers fill i the role of Scheherazade. The man who ! has not the patience, courage and imag- j ination to invent a plausible and pleasing ] tela for his children at bed-time will | never rut a figure in life. Let him not I fail in his most elementary duty. j