THE PAINS AND PLEASURES OF LIFE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 42, 17 October 1891, Page 489

THE PAINS AND PLEASURES OF LIFE.

f HANK you, John. Gentlemen, here’s looking at you,’ said the seedy man as he raised his glass to his lips. * Ah, gentlemen, Shakespeare may have been right enough when he wrote that all the world was a stage, and all the men and women merely players. But life isn’t a play.’ * What is it?’ ‘ It’s mo:e like a rehearsal.’ There was a pause, and then the seedy m an looked carelessly at the waiter and said: ‘ Gentlemen, let us go back over that scene.’ The waiter quite understood him. * Talking of rehearsals,’ said the seedy man, ‘ 1 had a most curious experience the other night.’ • Up there ?’ •Yes; in the shades. We were all sitting around talking, when a light shade came in and whispered something to Shakespeaie.’ ‘That’ll go all light. I won’t change it,’said Shakespeare testily. ‘ But,’ said the shale, ‘ we must do something. Those plots are all played out, and old Fate says that he is tired of chestnuts. He wants something original.’ ‘Tell him I’ll come and look at the rehearsal,’ said Shakespeare, aud the shade disappeared. ‘ Do you want to come ?’ said Shakespeare to me. ‘ Wheie?’ ‘ To the rehearsal ?’ ‘ What rehearsal ?’ ‘Come, I’ll tell you as we go along.’ So I went. ‘ No doubt,’ said Shakespeare, ‘ you've been very much surprised lately to find real life so very dramatic. The extraordinary sensational murders and scandals and things have, I hear, been raising a great deal of talk down below. Well, the fact is, we are writing the plots of human lives now. The Fates had become quite prosaic, life on earth had become quite uninteresting, and the latest idea has been that we dramatists should concoct the careers of men and women.’ ‘ But are all those things prearranged ?’ ‘ Why, of course. They’re all rehearsed beforehand.’ ‘ But I don’t remember having any rehearsal.’ ‘I dare say not. You only recognise things when you are in the body by pleasure or pain. When you are rehearsed you don’t feel any pleasure or any pain ; you simply go through the form. You’re only a soul in a state of insensibility. Sometimes, perhaps, you may have felt that you have gone through certain scenes before, haven’t you ?’ ‘Yes, I have.’ ‘ That was a shadowy reflex of your rehearsal.’ There before us was a great amphitheatre, with a great big stage, and a whole crowd of shadowy figures were being rehearsed, just as they do actors in a new play in the ordinary earthly theatre. There was some objection to me, because there were no mortals allowed in the amphitheatre. ‘ Never mind,’ said Shakespeare to the shade at the door, ‘let him in. He’s nearly all spiiit.’ And they let me in. A very important looking figure beckoned to Shakespeare. It was old Fate himself. ‘ See here, William,’ said Fate, ‘ that last plot you sent us won’t fit. ’ ‘ Why ?’ ‘ Twice or three times I’ve had to send out and have the human frame entirely altered to suit your ideas, but I ean’t possibly make a man like the hero of this story.’ • I don’t see it.’ ‘ Can’t you see that a fellow with this chap’s genius would need about four times the usual number of brain cells, and the muscular capacity of an earthquake !’ ‘ Well, you can do anything, can’t you!’ ‘ I can do a great deal, but if I made a man fifteen feet high, with twenty-five pounds of brain matter, as soon as he was seen there, they’d put him in a dime museum, and end his usefulness.’ ‘ That’s true.’ ‘ If he didn’t get into a museum he’d be so uncomfoitable he’d blow his twenty-five pounds of brains out and get back here. You must keep down this desire for novelty a little. You are making things altogether too dramatic. I don’t mind a little difference in mortals, just to make things interesting ; but, hang it all, the men and women we’ve had to make since we engaged you dramatists to invent real human lives have simply puzzled me and upset the scheme of creation. The earth is stuffed full of cranks, and even old Lucifer came up the other day to say that he didn’t know what to do with them when they came to him.’ ‘ This is the old cry,’ said Shakespeare. ‘ You manufacture the same old patterns of mortality you have been making for a hundred thousand years. The same old things—two legs, two arms, a trunk, a neck, a head, two eyes, a nose, two ears and a tuft of hair on the crown. Why ean’t you strike something original? For heaven’s sake, give our genius a chance. How can anybody invent plots for beings like that ? Give us some leeway. They want a change down there themselves. Why don't you make men with one leg, or three legs, with feet behind and before and a face on both sides of their head, or something new anyway ?’ ‘ What’s that ?’ ‘ See here, why should a man only be able to look one way ? Why shouldn’t he be able to run any way he likes ? It has always seemed to me that you Fates are the most primitive inventors.’ ‘ There’s something in your idea, William. I can’t myself see why a new kind of man could not be made with those advantages.’ ‘ And if I might suggest ’ I put in. ‘ Who are you?’ asked Fate. ‘ He’s a mortal just upon a visit.’ ‘ Great heavens, a mortal ! How did you get up here!' ‘ Haven’t you met Mme. Blavatsky ?’ I asked. ‘ Blavatsky ? Never heard the name.’ ‘ She was buried a few months ago, but her soul keeps marching on.’ ‘ I'll have a warrant issued for her arrest. This won’t do at all.’ ‘ We down there wish you would.’ ‘ Well, anyway, what can you suggest ?’ ‘ I should think, to put it mildly,’ I said, * that after making several billion millions of people you would require no argument to prove that life is a failure. I never saw

such a singular case of misfit as humanity has been.’ ‘ Oh, indeed. ’ ‘ If I might venture to remonstrate, I would say that you should be discharged and somebody with sense put in your place. You may mean well, but that is an excuse very often for cruelty and more frequently for idiocy.’ ‘ I’m sorry,’ said Fate. ‘ I thought I was doing very well. J ust take a look at the rehearsal. ’ ‘ What are those ?’ I asked. ‘ Those are souls.’ ‘ Have they lived on earth before ?’ ‘ Certainly ; some of them several times.’ ‘ You do not provide each body with an original soul then ?’ ‘Oh, dear, no; we couldn’t affoid that. Let me see.’ He turned to a kind of book-keeper. ‘ How many souls are there altogether ?’ ‘ About fifteen hundred millions.’ ‘Yes, that’s about it. We have to keep a few here always to supply unexpected needs. There are about thirteen hundred millions of people using souls now, I think.’ ‘ Then there is reincarnation ?’ ‘ Decidedly.’ ‘ Why can we not remember our previous existence! Have I lived on the earth before!’ ‘ Yes. Let me see. What number is this gentleman’s soul ? Just look him up.’ The bookkeeper looked me up. He came over and whispered to old Fate. ‘Ah ! You were rather distinguished. You were a priest of Osiris in the time of the Ptolemies.’ ‘ And after that.’ ‘We gave you a rest We always give them a greater or less holiday when they come back.’ ‘ And why can’t I remember all about it ?’ ‘ Because the old brain cells are decayed and doubtless you are a mummy somewhere in Egypt now.’ ‘ And is that all memory is ?” ‘Yes; that’s all.’ I turned away and looked at the rehearsal. ‘ Tell me,’ I said, ‘ why do you make that woman’s life so miserable ? See, she loves that man, and he loves her, and you part them. You make this man inconstant, that woman unfaithful. Yet he would be constant to her and she would be faithful to him. What benefit is it to make life a torture when it might be happiness?’ ‘ That would not do at all. Life would have no excitement ?’ ‘ Is pain excitement!’ ‘Of course. Look how happy she is because he comes to her and takes her in his arms and tells her he loves her. There is luxury in forgiving, delight in the reaction from despair. It is a lie. He doesnot love her ;it will not last, but after all there is an intensity in her happiness that faith and constancy could never give.’ ‘ Why does that man have all the wealth and comfort, and this other, so much better fitted to appreciate it, only the struggle for existence ?’ ‘ This poor man would be wretched if he had not something to struggle for ; that rich man is ten times more unhappy, for all it looks so different. He had his happiness before he got his money.’ ‘ And so we mortals never know what is best for us?’ ‘No, my dear friend, happiness is like everything else, it varies in quality more than in quantity. The skies are blue, the woods are beautiful, the sea is a delight, the thousand charms of nature thrill your senses, because they come as change from toil and struggle in the city’s smoke. Money is not as much when you have it as when you want it. The rich man cannot for all his gold buy the enjoyment that the poor man gets out of his pittance. The desire for riches is an unhappiness that does not touch the heart ; the care that money brings is not as satisfying as it looks. See, they are rehearsing there. That man will be poor, he will be hungry. He will be in despair. He will meet a friend. He will earn a dollar. He will eat. He will grow rich later ; but never in all his wealth will he know a meal like that. You see, my friend, there is only a certain amount of happiness for every life. Sometimes it is diffused over all the years, and then, like diluted wine, it is mildly pleasant. In other lives it is concentrated in moments, hours and days of intense delight. Where the happiness is concentrated the misery is diffused ; where the misery is concentrated the happiness is diffused. So all lives are balanced, and we — well—we Fates do the best we can.’

Peter Robertson.