Boston's Crooked Streets.
A Harvard professor, being intensely loyal to Boston, as all good Harvard professors are, has been talking in favor of Boston's calf-path thoroughfares.
Some of the reasons for giving the preference to crooked streets are as follows:
If the streets are straight, the dust can sweep along them in great clouds; if the streets curve, the dust will not go far.
If the streets are straight and equally distant from one another, the lots are of the same size, and the poor man must have as expensive a lot for his two-story house as the rich man for his six-story house.
Straight streets weary the eye with their long, monotonous reaches. Curved streets are continually affording a pleasant and restful variety.
These are the reasons the professor gave for preferring Boston streets to those of Chicago, for instance, or almost any other Western and newly built city. You can doubtless give many more reasons, if you are a Bostonian; and you will probably get back at him with a dozen counter arguments if you are a Chicagoan.
But, however that may be—and it is, after all, a minor concern—I am interested in the application of this matter to life.
I confess that I do not care for a life that is laid out in parallel lines, with neat little blocks of rectangular duties and pleasures, with nothing unexpected or fresh or original, with no variety and— whim, shall we call it?—to break up the dull monotony.
When I see such a man, so trim and trig, I have a naughty impulse to hit him somewhere and double him up, thus inducing one curve, at least, among his straight lines.
Of course you will all understand that I would not have in the world a particle less goodness—we need all there is, and far more; but goodness is not half good unless it is also attractive. They are three—the good, the true, and the beautiful; and not the least of these is the last.
Every Trip Different.
If I can get a point or two while shooting up to the seventh floor, it is so much clear gain. The other day I had a profitable half-minute conversation with one of our elevator men, as he and I ascended in an empty car.
"You must find this a monotonous occupation," I observed, "just traveling up and down all day."
I applied a mental lash to my wretched little tongue as soon as I had said it, because it is against my principles to make such gloomy remarks, planting the seeds of discontent. I was ashamed of myself.
No harm was done, however, for the elevator man made a cheery reply, that has stuck in my memory ever since.
"Not at all monotonous," said he; "not at all! No two trips are alike. The company is always different, and then, almost every trip someone in the car has something pleasant to say to a fellow. Why, it is really interesting. Seventh!" And out I stepped, with a fresh thought in my head; several thoughts, indeed.
One was admiration for that buoyant contentment. An elevator man does not see the best side of human nature. People are sometimes decidedly cross because the elevator does not come as quickly as they think it should. People often crowd in an unmannerly way. People are disgusted if they find a full car, or if the car does not wait for their leisurely progress across the hall, or if the elevator man does not stop at the floor where they want to get off—a floor they forgot to name, but all elevator men should be mind-readers. No; elevators are not the most comfortable spots in the world. Small wonder that many elevator men are crabbed; but here was one of them that actually enjoyed life.
He was making the best of it. Instead of considering the monotony of it,—the same shaft, the same floors, the everlasting up and down,—he thought of the variety of it, the ever-changing human elements. And instead of remembering the cross words, he remembered the pleasant ones. Happy and sensible fellow.
And then I fell to reviewing my own elevator utterances. "Almost every trip someone in the car has something pleasant to say to a fellow." Was I often that "someone"? Had my elevator remarks been elevating? been worth remembering? Had I often, indeed, gone farther than a curt nod?
Ah, my brothers, this is a mixed-up world, and you are very much mixed up with it. Will you or nill you, you are in touch with your brothers everywhere. Christ—why, put a finger on the hem of His garment, and life and health flowed from Him. Alas, alas, how much of Christ I have yet to learn!
"Tired of Everything."
An upright and prosperous merchant disappeared from an Indiana town. His business affairs were in good shape. He had a pleasant family. He was leading a moral life. He was "well off," so far as money goes. But he disappeared mysteriously, and only after five years returned to his home and friends.
And the reason he gave for the queer performance? Just this, that he had "grown tired of everything"!
That man had lost his interest in life. His work had become humdrum. His family life had grown monotonous. He wanted a change. Anything. He grew desperate. He made the plunge, and was off.
You have been very fortunate if you have never been tempted as he was tempted. Fortunate, and unselfish.
For that is the secret of it,—selfishness. No one can live for himself altogether or mainly, without becoming a victim to ennui.
"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" soon becomes his song. And all is vanity, emptiness, to him; because his all is his poor, miserable, empty soul.
But Paul never said that. No, though his bank account was expressed by thirteen ciphers and no unit.
No, though his enemies were everywhere, and stonings, revilings, imprisonments, were his lot. Paul never could say that. Life was always fresh to Paul, interesting and joyous. That was because Paul's life was Christ like, it was given for others.
Are you growing "tired of everything"?
The fault is not in "everything." It is in you.
Monotonous Minds.
Professor Munsterberg, the psychologist, once declared it a mistake to say, as is so often said, that the monotonous work necessitated by our modem machinery is more wearisome because it is monotonous. It often happens that the most humdrum work in a factory is the work most enjoyed by the operatives. The truth is that certain minds prefer to work in a groove, and the more monotonous their tasks the better pleased they are, and the better results they achieve.
On the contrary, minds of another class prefer change. Monotony is terribly wearisome to them. They like to shift from task to task and even from occupation to occupation. They move from house to house and from town to town. They readily grow tired of their friends, and adopt a new set.
Evidently it is very important, in dealing with men, to know which kind of minds we are handling. Monotonous minds should be kept at steady jobs, erratic minds should be shifted from one employment to another. Thus we keep them happiest and most productive.
But in dealing with ourselves, we need to apply these truths most carefully. While it is necessary for us to discover the bent of our dispositions, we must look out or we shall confound slothfulness with the first sort of mind described, and frivolity with the second sort of mind. We think we work best at steady jobs? Perhaps; but let us be sure that we are not merely lazy and un-enterprising. We get tired easily of one task? Let us make certain that it is not because of sheer light-headedness, a mind like a weathervane, turned by the least breath of wind and incapable of a fixed purpose.
And let us not forget, either, that to a large extent we can change our dispositions. We can leap out of our dearly loved ruts and learn the joys of discovery and adventure. We can curb our impatience and restlessness and learn the delights of consistent, iron-willed, plodding and profitable endeavor.
In short, the wise man will know himself, discovering at what labor he can accomplish the most, and by what methods he can win the largest success; but he will not be the slave of method, place, or circumstance. If he cannot get the task he likes, he will like the task he gets.
The Need of Color.
We have all had a headache after watching moving pictures. If we ever thought about it, we have said that the flicker of the pictures, as one after another is thrown upon the screen, hundreds to the minute, wearies our eyes and gives us the headache. Now comes along an optician and asserts that the reason for the headache is not the flicker, but the fact that the pictures are not colored.
All our lives, he reminds us, we are surrounded by color; bathe in it, as it were. The colors of this beautiful world are soft, harmonious, soothing. They break up the glare of the sunlight and modify its effects, which otherwise might be as harmful as those of a great stretch of snow which so often produces "snow-blindness" among Arctic travelers.
But these moving pictures are barren of color—simply unrelieved light and shade, flashing out in a black hall. Our nerves are not used to such treatment, and they rebel. The flicker may have something to do with it—our optician says not; but the absence of color has much more to do with it. The cure lies in the coloring of the films as near as possible to the colors of nature.
Now I understand better than I did before the pity of what we call "colorless lives," lives of dull, dreary, deadly routine and monotony. They are defrauded of one of the birthrights of every child of God. The cold, bare facts of life are pressed upon their shrinking nerves, unrelieved by variety and softness and beauty and grace. Alas, for the lives in which there is no laughter, no loveliness, no touch of joy! Just a pot of roses in a window would help wonderfully, just a merry game in the evening, just the chatter of a child.
One of the chief purposes of religion should be to introduce these bits of color into colorless lives. Are we not coming to understand this more and more?