RAILWAY CASUAL EMPLOYEES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19906, 28 September 1926, Page 6

RAILWAY CASUAL EMPLOYEES.

HOW MEN BEHAVE. FAMOUS HISTORICAL FIGURES. ( How do you suppose you would behave if you had become famous? You don't know. You modestly consider it unlikely that fame will ever come your way. Doubtless you are right. Still, there is no harm in anticipating the possible. A survey of some who have acquired fame might prove helpful. Just at present you feel that if fame sought you out you would not allovz the fact to swell your head. Yet you never can be sure. There seems to be an irresistible inclination to lift up the mind with the lifting up of the position. Much, of course, depends on the type of fame you covet. To be a popular movie star may be yonr ambition. To be arrested on the ground of your close resemblance to a notorious burglar is much more likely to be your luck. We are not, however, thinking of such fortuitous <amc. We are referring to the fame accorded you by your fellowmen for some heroic achievement, or for proving yourself intellectually pre-eminent. Let such fame in your case bo postulated. Do you think you could stand the strain of it? Remember, lame is not so easy to carry as, at eight, you might think. Fame seems to act like alcohol. After a man has consumed a quantity of it he begins to like it; soon ho cannot get enough of it. It is for that reason that fame and vanity are so frequently found together. Some men to whom Fate was generous in the matter of honest fame were monuments of childish vanity To carry a full cup it is essential to have a steady hand. But when the cup of fame is placed in some men’s hands, those hands begin to wobble exceedingly. You are merely revealing a phase of vanity when you claim that you would not be liko that If you became famous, you would put on “side,'’ but you would call it maintaining your dignity. Your enemies, and much more freely your friends, would call it your disgusting concoit. Neither innocence nor wisdom ensures immunity from vanity. The tendency is apparent in the youngest child and in the ripest sage. It is nothing but vanity which nerves the baby to take his first staggering steps 'into the maternal arms, or prompts him to hold up his hands to show how tall he is. On the other hand, observe Solomon's modest reference to himself: “Lo, I have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem.” Solomon must have been beautiful in all his glory, but ho must also have been colossal in nil his vanity. Take those ancient pieces of literature, the Homeric iioems. The speeches made by most of the great men consist for the most part of blatant personal boost. Were some of Homer’s heroes reincarnated in this generation they would make first-rate publicity officers Cicero was a distinguished Roman. His contributions to oratory and philosophy have won him immense fame; even while he lived ho was renowned. Yet his vanity was probably greater than his ability. He was on one occasion invited to undertake an embassy to which some slight risk attached. He refused, on the ground that his life was much too important to the State to be placed in a position of peril. Even the Caesars wore not always satisfied with purple robe and laurel wreath. One of them was about to start a sea trip when the weather was promising to bo dirty; tome of the court satellites tried to dissuade him. ‘‘Silence,” was the haughty answer, “the ship cannot sink that carries Ciesar.” The middle ages seem to have been a thousand years of • brag. Men strutted about like bantams. Benvenuto Cellini was a particularly bright specimen. Ills autobiography fascinates hosts of readers to this day, largely because the writer is so blatantly and unashamedly vain. He must have been an excellent craftsman and swordsman, but on every page ho refreshes the world’s memory on these points. England's Milton had a good conceit of himself. In tlie ninth hook of ‘‘Paradise Lost” ho likens himself to writers such ns Homer and Virgil. Even Shakespeare could write of his own work; ‘‘No marble nor the gilded monuments of princes shall outlast this powerful rhyme.” Keats complacently observed, ‘T think 1 shajl be among the English poets after I die.” Voltaire declared, "Vanity never dies. And he did imcli ,o keep it alive; he was one of the vainest of men. Warren Hastings, by his .cliieveracnts in India, proved himself me of the greatest Englishmen of his time. Yet he was not content. In his retirement ~t Daylesford he persisted in cultivating, lA' no means successfully, the art of loetvy. Each morning lie read to his guests at breakfast some poetic masterpiece be had composed during the preceding 24 hours. His genuine fame was not enough: he had to supplement it with that ludicrous touch of vanity. Lord Nelson was an extremely vain little man. Burke was so vainly proud of his famous passage on Marie Antoinette that ho wept over it when he wrote it and rewept over it when he reread it. Zola’s fame as a novelist extended far hevond the frontiers of France, let it is recorded that every morning he scanned the newspapers with childish eagerness, and tossed them aside if they contained only accounts of great international happenings. But if, in som- obscure corner, there was a refcrenc to bis writings, ho would rub his hands gleefully. • Tolstoy's reputation was thoroughly established before he was middle aged: his admirers burned incense before him for many years. Yet it was entirely because the adulation he was receiving was not adequate to ins appetite for it that the old man forsook his home, and deliberately worked up a stunt to draw attention to himself. The result was that ho died somewhat sordidly in the vicinity of a bleak little railway station. Everyone is aware that it was Coleridge's vanity to be thought a great preacher which led him to ask Lamb, “Did you ever hear me preach?’ He received the merited answer, "I never heard vou do anything else.” The vanity of Thomas Carlyle was insufferable after his fame was secure. The Liberals of London approached him with the awe appropriate to an oracle. Carlyle did his best to encourage the pose. Royalty is by no moans free from petty vanity, and there is the authority of Disraeli for saying that, in their case, flattery may safely be laid on with a trowel. Disraeli* himself was shrewd, self-con-trolled. and brilliantly clever. In his youth ho was a great fop; that may always be excused in the young man. But, even as an old man, Disr cli was inordinately vain of the peculiar dornment on his brow, which is still familiar to posterity as “the Disraelian curl.” It would seem that every mortal is liable to succumb to this form of foolishness. If, therefore, you expect to be famous in the future, you evidently cannot begin too soon to put up your defences against the subtle encroachments of vanity. Genuine fame is conferred upon you by your fellow-men. j f ever you are given ~ny share of it, strive to be contented with it. Vanity is a miscalculation on your part as to jour importance. So, if you become great, see that you keep vour arithmetic right so far as it relates to your personal worth. Vanity is merely a process of telling lies to oneself. It’ is the one mirror you never can trust.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib, —If tho statement made by the secretary of the Returned Soldiers’ Associa tion at : ts last meeting and by “Another Ex-Digger” in this morning’s Daily Times with reference to the appointment of casuals by the Railways Department, is true, then this 'matter should not only be taken up by the Returned Soldiers’ Association, but by the right-thinking citizens of New Zealand. But for the “Digger” volunteers throughout the Empire we might today be working for German ‘■bosses.’’ When tilings were going badly with the Allies at the latter cud of 1915 and volunteers were hard to get, Sir James Allen. Minister of Defence, in answer to a question, stated that, any employee in tho Government service who volunteered woulii be reinstated when he returned, and would not lose his seniority. How many “shirkers” are there in tho service who are in some cases two grades higher than “Diggers?” This would not have happened if Sir James Allen had remained in politics. I would advise tho Returned Soldiers’ Association to get in touch with (he Welfare League as it carries weight with the present Government. —I am, etc., A Citizen.