Part 1 (1/2)
Trivia.
by Logan Pearsall Smith.
_Preface_
”You must beware of thinking too much about Style,” said my kindly adviser, ”or you will become like those fastidious people who polish and polish until there is nothing left.”
”Then there really are such people?” I asked, lost in the thought of how much I should like to meet them. But the well-informed lady could give me no precise information about them.
I often hear of them in this tantalizing manner, and perhaps one day I shall get to know them. They sound delightful.
_The Author_
These pieces of moral prose have been written, dear Reader, by a large Carnivorous Mammal, belonging to that suborder of the Animal Kingdom which includes also the Orang-outang, the tusked Gorilla, the Baboon with his bright blue and scarlet bottom, and the long-eared Chimpanzee.
BOOK I
_How blest my lot, in these sweet fields a.s.sign'd Where Peace and Leisure soothe the tuneful mind._
SCOTT, of Amwell, _Moral Eclogues_ (1773)
_Happiness_
Cricketers on village greens, haymakers in the evening suns.h.i.+ne, small boats that sail before the wind--all these create in me the illusion of Happiness, as if a land of cloudless pleasure, a piece of the old Golden World, were hidden, not (as poets have imagined), in far seas or beyond inaccessible mountains, but here close at hand, if one could find it, in some undiscovered valley. Certain gra.s.sy lanes seem to lead between the meadows thither; the wild pigeons talk of it behind the woods.
_To-Day_
I woke this morning out of dreams into what we call Reality, into the daylight, the furniture of my familiar bedroom--in fact into the well-known, often-discussed, but, to my mind, as yet unexplained Universe.
Then I, who came out of Eternity and seem to be on my way thither, got up and spent the day as I usually spend it. I read, I pottered, I talked, and took exercise; and I sat punctually down to eat the cooked meals that appeared at stated intervals.
_The Afternoon Post_
The village Post Office, with its clock and letter-box, its postmistress lost in tales of love-lorn Dukes and coroneted woe, and the sallow-faced grocer watching from his window opposite, is the scene of a daily crisis in my life, when every afternoon I walk there through the country lanes and ask that well-read young lady for my letters. I always expect good news and cheques; and then, of course, there is the magical Fortune which is coming, and word of it may reach me any day. What it is, this strange Felicity, or whence it shall come, I have no notion; but I hurry down in the morning to find the news on the breakfast table, open telegrams in delighted panic, and say to myself ”Here it is!” when at night I hear wheels approaching along the road. So, happy in the hope of Happiness, and not greatly concerned with any other interest or ambition, I live on in my quiet, ordered house; and so I shall live perhaps until the end.