ROMANCE

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6408, 30 October 1923, Page 5

ROMANCE

(By Dr. Frank Crane.) Wonder is what I want, not knowledge, adventure, not safety; risk, not gain.

We are all hungry for romance, whether we be young or old. “I am convinced,” wrote Thoreau, “that to maintain oneself on this earth is not a hardship, but a passtime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial. Success is sad. Most successful men I have met are rather boresome. They have been. They are calcined with the past. They seem to have little present and no future. The interesting crowd are the bright-eyed fellows who are playing the game. They are living. And the most interesting thing about life is living. They are full of the future, which is fascinating. They are surprised daily. 1 Danger? Men flee clubdom for danger, and court it in the jungles of Africa or the trenches of France. Danger is the eternal lure of the sea. The most attractive thing about a ship is that it may sink. The unknown is the country of the soul. The known is a pitiful dry spot. Everybody hates his home town. We love this old world because it is such a clever conjurer, always pulling rabbits out of hats and bowls of goldfish from handkerchiefs. We seize the newspapers to see what is the last trick. We expect the unexpected. All the world wakes up every morning crying “What next?” Just to live is great sport to’ those who know enough to play. “How you begin, not how you end, is the thing that matters,” says R. L. Stevenson. “It is not Safety nor Success, but Romance that makes for happiness. Success is the abstract philosophy of life; Romance is the concrete enjoyment of living. Define life bravely! Dare to be happy! If we must die, let us die young! Be children, all of you, be children! God save us from an elderly, respectable world! Be children and learn how to play. For, if you don’t, you are lost for ever. For, except we become as little children we cannot see the kingdom and in no wise shall enter it. Romance for me. I hate realism. Tradition is richer than history, for history tells what happens, while tradition tells what ought to have happened. Give me romance, a fat novel, like “The Count of Monte Christo,” a random and impossible yarn, and a warm chair, and a feeling that I ought to go to and a drunken desire to read on and on —what bliss can exceed such ’delicious dissipation? What naughtiness so luxuriant?