LUMBER!

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18629, 9 February 1924, Page 6 (Supplement)

LUMBER!

Oar greatest bother is what we have gathered together for our comfort and convenience. We never realise this so much as when we go to move, Then out of closets and storerooms, from bureau drawers and from under the beds, from the upper shelves of the pantry and the library, emerge a motley hoard of old and fuzzy and worm-eaten books and clothe* and chairs and bric-a-brac, to stand before us tormenting us to decide whether we shall throw them away or keep them another seven years. Finally we store them in new closets, cellars, holes, drawers and upper shelves. We envy Thoreau, who, in his cabin, by Walden pond, had no furniture; he saw a pretty stone one day, and gave it bouse room; but when he discovered that it had to be dusted every month or so he threw it away and was free. On ray desk I find a collection of distracting litter. Worthless old letters, pamphlets, abortive essays, notes, and tokens cling to the work table like barnacles. Oh, that some benevolent housemaid would burn the mess without my knowledge. I should be angry, but saved. Verily, " a man's life consists not in the abundance of things he possesseth." Thereof consists his despair. We are obsesed, hagridden, smothered, and devoured by our lares and penates. Baggage is the curse of travel. Start for a "tour with three trunks, and your life will be labour and sorrow. Most of the time when you might be viewing the Pitti Palace or the Coliseum by moonlight you will be chasing &he lost trunk, the old oaken trunk, the iron-bound trunk, the moss-covered trunk you packed up so well. How many men go through life dragging a mountain of impedimenta ! They spend their energy acquiring things they wish thev could get rid of. The first part of their "life they are buying a house and paying off the mortgage ; the latter part they devote trying; to sell it for half what it cost them. The woman is as bad. Her bird and cat and blue tea set anchor her with chains of brass and triple steel. Let us who are perforce humble, therefore, reioice that failure and low station, mediocrity and obscurity have their compensations. We, the tramps and scribblers, shoemakers and day labourers, who are not endowed, to whom to-morrow is uncertain, may rejoice in this, that to bo a success in this world means a trainload of baggage, hordes of hollow friends, distant relatives suddenly becoming tender and intimate, hundreds of hungry eyes looking out at us from the jungle of the unemployed, many a band that would strike us for pure envy, and our share of King Solomon's vexation of spirit.—Dr. Frank Crane.