What Really Matters.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIIC, Issue 14238, 2 July 1910, Page 2 (Supplement)

What Really Matters.

(By -Alice Perguson.)

FOR MEN AND WO3TEN.

I The decay of sentiment in the Angloi *?axon race seeins to provoke a good j deal of cant in many quarters. But . iliore are a certain number of sincere : and, apparently, quite 6ane people, j b nose news command attention. who set themselves to bewail the fact—as i r ; .'t mattered.' —and to try and expound its cause. They find it deplorable that men and women, nowadays, will say with much complacency, ''Thank goodness, I am not sentimental'!" It was not always thus, tliey cry. Xo, that's quire true, but wo hope the world grows wiser as it gets older. \ou 6ee, the thing that really ruat- | tors in these times it to get on in life, Ito get money, power, position—most | assurec.ly to get money, for money i» i absolutely essential to our happiness. , since it procures us jzood eating, line : clothes, swift, luxurious travel and the many other such-like things that make lite worth living. Xow sentiment, so tar from helping us to make money, is ail acknowledged hindrance. There-1 fore, it is never included in the mental ami moral outfit of an nu-to-date young man with liis way to liustle through the crowded world of the twentieth century. And since he can do so well without sentiment, in his youth, he is certainly not likely to feel the lack of it in his maturer years. "Why. even at the period when* the yodnpr man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of marriage—the wooing period. when a. certain amount of sentiment used to be thought a. positively necessary part of the -wooer's equip- i me lit, his want of the article must aid ! liim greatly in making a judicious j choice of a mate. Xo blind god lor' him! He won't—to use a vulgar phrase—buy a pig in a poke, as foolish j wooers, who do their courtmfr with the I bandage of sentiment over their eyes. I can't avoid doing. " ' j

I And the up-to-dato girt of 1910? | Well, can higher praise be given her | than to say tliat she is a. good match i for the young man. The girl. some ! generations ago, hold it as aw inalienable part of her creed that the girl was j well lost for love. The girl, to-day. I glancing back through the vista of ! years at the quaint young figure of her j ancestress, finds the latter's ridiculous I notions about love as laughter-moving ! : 's the obsolete fashion of her frock, j That other girl fed her fancy on poetry | and romance, and such like rubbish, j and looked, with dreaming eyes, for j the coming of Prince Charming as the I crowning event- oi' her life. He came • very soon, as a rule, for the silly j dix-aming eyes of seventeen had a. ■ magic- power of transforming an eager , suitor of very ordinary parts into the i one and only prince. Strau»e to say. i too. more oltfu than not. years of [ married life did not take this magic i power from her eyes, and. until they I closed in death, the honest commonplace husband remained her Prince i Charming. Of course, this magic, was I pure sentiment, and we can see hovr ; injurious to truth sentiment must hp. i when it could kwi) the poor thing all her lii'e in a falsely-grounded content, blind to her husband's limitations. Ah, well, the world has forged ahead since her day! The typical girl of the twentieth century has no magicworking mists in her eyes. They are as clear and bright as diamonds. They see all that is to l>e seen very clearly. Is she to be blamed because they cannot see what is not to be seen ? "'What is only to he felt by some primitive inner sense which she has outgrown in her wonderful development? Besides, she isn't "looking for Prince Charming. She doesn't believe that there are any such princes. And very rightly, too! for all that some people hold J that it is her scepticism which is fatal ] to their existence. True daughter of t her business-like age. she thoroughly j understands that marriage, first and! last, is a business contract wherein j it is her duty t-o look well after her own 1 interests. I

Hip worthy and apparently quite sane l-:> whom 1 have previously roieried. make a <j;reut bother about this admirably sensible attitude of her.*. "So shockingly devoid of spntjlnoiit they cry. Sentiment ai^ain! As if sentiment mattered anything If ymi ;isk them what- they understand by this thing called sentiment, that they seem to put so nmcli weight on. you never get an answer that you can hazard a jiuess at their meaning. Sentiment would seem to be tho kind oi thing; that makes some people rave about sunsets and flowers, of grow maudlin over a string of verses, an ol;l letter, the memory of a dead friend, that impels theui, instead of mindinc ! their own business, which is clearly j their Inchest duty in life, to go help- i ins; lame dogs over stiles and perform-j vn<r wither silly and unrennmerative l actions of the same sort. Sentiment] •would have vs believ», among other 1

! foolishnesses, that suorc=x is its own reward, and tb.it a wreath of bay leaves should give as much pleasure to its recipients as a solid-silver tea I service or a purse of sovereigns, j AMiat do any of us want with senti- ; ment, a fantastic, ia tangible tiling ; that has no money value and can't, : th- :< f<jrc. ]jr-lp ns to buy the thousand j a ' K < " !1, pl'wnnt tiinpiUe things that j wr. <]o v.T,j]ir Seiitii::t nt is dying oat anions tin. Anglo-Saxon race! Well, so < wc have the things that really matter, we can surely look upon its passing with no resrr-t. Hut. b!e-.s you. the fanatics who bar-ra-k for cent:m«nt are scandalised if ;^ ou f a *' T tr> them. "A world without ; ='->itnr.< nt: - ' th' v cry. "Picture the ; ' f ' r ' V - : - < r ■ '' f r Hordes of brutal beinss. ' '' n '-\ lv f°-T=ome btranse of the 1 human hrain in tbem. w,th thoi r _ hands in the nlatter ' mat erial joys of life; each, re- . i - = ,, ur share, furiouslr hts f-lloirs, shovine aside or y ]r fJ :n , C OTI ! V /^ W r!" Ts it pofsl♦W « ™^ nd wUI over th. t pass. Who can kit! : _ Alas, is it not clear that this hustling CMCiteraent-lovins a.-e, monev-sr-pinnrr, is robbing ''T 1 * °"i and imf.cinations. La and *nnn fretting and spcndiriE WO lay our powers." Detracted hv a multiplicity of interests making [? r pK-nsure or a.nx>»ty, -we have no + " 'Vender the' meaning of no time to seek- to uenetrate br-neath the sunace? of the neoole we ; meet. -Nowadays, our tweial ' inter- • course is hke our reading—extensive not lrtr-nsive. We make hoctfl of a»j onaintancos. but remarkablv few : frioiuis.

j T '' onr and electric power, . r and telephones, our no- • to-d.ite luxuries and conveniences. our : liuse enterprises—commercial, mechani- ; c*u. indvistrial. our numberless invenS tlo ,? s , n,IJ discoveries—we have mar- : vellousiv quickened the pace of living : and r-nlnnred our field of work and injterest. But. alas! we have not been • !'We to make our muscles stronger, : f>r our nerves tougher. "We have not been able to make our heart-beats keep time easily with the quickened uace of j living. TVe have not been able iroj mnne from 7]errors breakdown,' to ! raise the increase of ; °l ,r , cultiv.-itioii of the -f-ularged* fiekj 10l human interests. And. so it comet i about that, in our feverish efforts t< j k<*ep up the pace, and at least scratci [ The surface of the ground, we have to i let- something co. Naturally, we ] e t so what we think matters least. Tbv* keepin- a tight hold on material i thins* we drop s«*7niment. t4"» soul of | tuf-.io as of everything elf®. - T! .'r immaterial. and it if f'l'y the body of thinr*:. the material, th->t wyOl-r matt-ens! Poor Wind totv tai";. nliv are we so slow to leary |th« lesson that, individual exwrieTioe, nnMly understood. *ho"ld be teaching I'C" 4- P r rr t dar °"r livea - the trntS that ha* been !ntr» toman e»r* • top© >ku. came _ a t^km Z bemg? Tfc tfwt profite-th. I? Amdb- Saxnwfcwi does not sn. nct,V,» me of ; t will be'Vtfci thing for Al>iriO^v.BXonflOTO."

T* ra.cn or absurdities? Xnyrm 9 with a !r-e iSi no » C ' n herself what realty matf»re.