OPINION HOARDERS.

Waikato Times, Volume 114, Issue 18986, 1 July 1933, Page 22 (Supplement)

OPINION HOARDERS.

CHANGING YOUR IDEAS. Do you 'hoard? (asks a writer in an English exchange). Certainly not, you exclaim indignantly. You are not that kind of person. Why, you send -stacks of old magazines to the hospital when you’ve done with them l Cousin Ethel always gets Your cast-off hats and discarded jumpers, and the jumble sale has never looked to you in vain. Only last week, you packed up a whole heap of gramophone records for the work-house. Hoard indeed! No, your conscience is perfectly clear. But though you many not collect piles of yellowing magazines, and odd aits of out-of-dale trimmings, are you quite sure that your mind isn’t •i bit of a glory-hole? Cluttered up with superannuated pieces of information, last year’s views on this year’s problems, old opinions and dienurd prejudices that would be better scrapped? “Opinions are useful as immediate currency, not for hoarding,” says John Drinkwater, the well-known writer. It seems to me that it is a very sound point of view. We have all met the type of woman who shivers all through the winter rather than have a gas-fire put in her room“In my opinion, they’re not healthy,” she says. Cigarettes and Lipstick. She still clings to the idea that a girl who smokes and uses lipstick must necessarily be “fast," that no nice girl would wear imitation jewellery, and that you can’t possibly be strong unless you eat meat twice a day.' In vain you try to convince tier that Hie gas fires of nineteen thirty-three couldn't hurt a fly. The most blameless duchess, nowadays, wears lipstick and ropes of improbably large “pearls”! it is a scientific fact that there is as much nourishment in cheese as in beefsteak. But it is no good, she has formed her opinions and she means to stick them. Twenty years ago, she announced that in her opinion the Davis boy would never come to any good. And though to-day, Ted Davis is a most steady and worthy member of the community, she persists in her opinion—formed on an orchard-rob-bing episode when Ted was 10—that “a "boy like that's hound to end in trouble." In the same way, her bad opinion of Winnie James, based on Winnie as a rather giggling dapper, remains unchanged now that Winnie is a charming and sensible girl of 24. And nothing will change ill There are quite a lot of opinion hoarders about. People who seem lo think it’s a sign of strength of character to stick lo their opinions whatever happens, instead of admitting frankly that they were mistaken, or that times have changed. Weakness of Obstinacy. It is not strong, it is weak —the weakness of obstinacy, to continue to assent that in your opinion the Smiths’ marriage will never lie a success. It is! That you will never like that Airs Brown. You don’t know her! That you couldn’t lie happy in a Hat. You've never tried! That you couldn't possibly wear red. Ami that you’ll never forgive Jack! Time alters everything, so don't hoard opinions that could be changed, ami ideas I hat arc rusty. (let rid ol'-lliem as mllilessly as you would discard dial cracked jug. You would throw away Dial molliealrn fur. Wouldn’t you? Well, why mil rid yourself of a lew moth-eaten ideas?