FROM A WOMANS ARMCHAIR

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12526, 16 August 1926, Page 5

FROM A WOMANS ARMCHAIR

ON DREAMING AND DOING There are people who are born with a germ of restless activity in tlioir composition that makes sloth an impossibility to them. Often they get. a great many more laurels than they deserve. Human judgment ought, to iefierve its greenest hays for the tempera-j mental dreamer who every now' and; I again, as a reaction against, inherent, sloth fulness, rises magnificently to the height of doing. If or it is your eon - j stitutional dreamers who do the worthwhile things in the end. Halt IMiitman loafed and invited his soul; and dynamited the world with the vast inspiration of the written word. It would be difficult. I think, to point to a angle one of the world’s outstanding intellects that waa not 'font

scions, most humbly, of their weakness, their temptation to rnorg# reality in dream, they have fougWs agaiust it to such splend d purpo«< that they have achieved roya| lines. _ ' It is not the people who themselves that they are never t n'l 1, that thev don’t know what it nr. mis tej relax, who are the real ’‘doers.’ Frequently their life’s history is r. record ci? petty tasks performed wiih that devastating mediocrity which eoeVS escape from its own limitations in ooni slant meaningless action. These forever busy people are not - re-cssarih' diligent in the matter ot hies real business, as many a,u employer and many a house-mistress could r.liirm. Their lack of sloth, of the art of relaxing in ordor to go one better, is, as much a. positive weakness as excess of that, attribute. Never pausing to take aiiv healthily introspective stock of themselves, thyr limited vision is apparent in their Inn.ted hold of action. Often a good mother, .sometimes even an excellent teacher (who ought- to know lx»tter!>. will reprimand with severity out of all proportion to the “fault” tho adolescent who indulges m nu occasional day-dream. If they were vapnblo of analysing the mental professes transpiring behind tho.se dreaming eyes, thev would realise hour little* cause they had for worry. History contains more than a few instances of actual genius whoso development, has been retarded by foolhardy scolding of the child who feels the mod of reflective solitude and inaction. Nature has a wav of making inherent sloth a mightv source of reaction. It is tho story of wmh reactions that one may road in the greatest inventions a* well as the mo-t superb philosophies of mankind, Al;i\ie Clare.