COTTONWOOL

Otago Witness, Issue 3769, 8 June 1926, Page 10

COTTONWOOL

By Aroha M. Hardcastle. (For thb Witness.) Recently a friend came to show me the beauties of a masterpiece in diamonds, platinum, and gold, enshrined in a jeweller's nest of cottonwool. While giving the ornament the attention which was most justly due, my thoughts carried me to marvel at the utility and all pervasiveness of the material, which formed its bed. When we are young, we learn that it lies at the heart of such delights as “Faster chickens,” and “Japanese pincushions ;” that it is a well tested specific for tooth and earache, even in conjunction with the painkiller or warm oil in which higher authorities put their trust. When it is necessary to impress geographic truth on minds, which are too busy with seven years or so of experience in life to devote time to observation, cottonwool figures in masses and layers as cloud formation and clings messily to plasticene maps of the'world in company with sundry grains of wheat and rice, and particles of sugar and coal. As we grow in years, and decrease temporarily in wisdom, we grow also intimate with those soft fibres, which the jeweller places about treasures sold to the unwary. Finally, we emerge into consciousness of a world wherein “Mother Grundy” has swathed all. save externals in many layered cottonwool, until too great familiarity comes near to breeding contempt. So it was with the present scribe, till yesterday. You shall hereafter discover why appreciation has been renewed. Yesterday there came ipto my hands two plays, which Mere new in France in 1924. They belong to that class which is specialised as highly reputable comedy. Each was heralded as truly diverting. In “Kreutzer Sonata,” by M. Noziere, a middle-aged Parisian, married to a girl he had taken “out of the schoolroom,” adored his mistress-wife to the point of tyranny, and mistructed her to the point of insanity. Growing older and wiser, as mother of two children and friend of her husband’s two intimates, the lady threatened suicide, and had to take poison to make good her threat. After her recovery, her husband loved and distrusted more intricately than ever, resorting at last to the time dishonoured ruse of absence and unexpected return. He found, as he richly deserved, that the lady was being musically consoled at an inconvenient hour. When finally man and wife were quitted by a perturbed third party, this pattern husband forced a confession of sorts from a terrified woman, won his adored one to his arms by passionate entreaty, and strangled poor Desdemona as the curtain fell. Being myself of the phlegmatic English, I fail entirely to see tne delicate comedy hidden in this exposition of jealousy, adoration, and treachery; nor do I clearly perceiva how it should tickle the fancy of an audience of whose number, according to Gaelic tradition, one half are ever in the predioament of the stage husband and wife, and the other half on the verge of so being. Possibly, in that dies its spice ? The second pleasant play, "Si je voulai* M By M» Geraldy, concerned a wife sufficiently good and sweet to be adored in all honour by husband, husband's friend, and young couein. An attractive and entirely unmoral woman friend openly

classified her as unattractive, wherefor the poor fool became hungrily desirous of being desired, with the result that she shocked her husband's friend into cynicism, was soundly kissed by the young cousin, nearly deserted by an outraged husband, and finally forgiven in a blaze of passion—a devouring flame at which she contentedly warmed her vanity. Ugh ! Thank the gods who have made our race what it is. for the kindly gift of cottonwool to draw over our loves, hates, and fears, and over the consequences of our actions, a veil between these things and the eyes of all men and of our lone selves. There is something singularly detached about Gallic enjoyment of the painful, or of the elemental in such situations; to Gallic eyes there may well appear a prudishness in our desire to escape from all discussion of such matters. The reason for this difference is racial. Among the Latin races, love, hate, and fear are heated by sudden fires, and cool as soon as a first disastrous manifestation ends. Men of colder climes are stirred by slow fires which may scarce be quenched when life itself is past. The Gaul then can live his life beside a woman who may have played him false, and with her at his side may obtain vicarious satisfaction from a portrayal of violence urn thq stage. The Saxon, with the wife whom he believes to be above suspicion, turns from the same spectacle, angered to laughter, pained by its crudity, because a devil lurks, in the depths of his heart, in cottonwool.