"Just Out to-Day."
I confess that I am very tired of this newsboy cry, "Scribblers' Magazine, just out to-day!" "Budge, Pluck, and Strife, just out to-day!" "A new novel by Thomas Hardy Davis, just out to-day!"
The implication is that to-morrow these products of the press will not be as good as they are to-day. That they are like pancakes,—never so delectable as in the first five minutes after they are fried. Many of these periodicals and stories are ephemeral enough, to be sure; but why rub it in?
Of course you cannot fairly expect much literary discrimination or philosophical thought from newsboys; but are we ourselves quite as free as we should be from the same error? Are not we continually basing our lives upon the assumption that the most novel is the most valuable? "Just out to-day!"-is not that cry the open sesame to our hearts when it is applied to a method of work, an organization, or a theory?
"Here's your Scheme for a Young People's Society! Just out to-day!"
"Here's your Latest Political Panacea! Just out to-day!"
"Here's you Newest Theory about the Bible! Just out to-day!"
"Here's the Very Freshest Presidential Candidate! Just out to-day!"
Thus, up and down the Street of Thought, the newsboys rush, their arms getting lighter at every rod, until they have found an eager sale for all their wares. And to-morrow an entirely new armful, "Just out to-day!"
Some of the new things are good, of course, and we must live in the present as well as in the wisest of the past; but the present is only a day, and the past is—ah, how many days, and how many men!
New Houses and New Methods.
As soon as a house is built the owner wishes to put tenants into it. Every day it lies idle is so much less money in his pocket. The real-estate agent also is eager for his profit, and wants quick returns from his advertisements. Tenants, moreover, are pleased with the prospect of a new house, and the newer the better.
But is the newer the better?
Not at all, for the main reason that new houses are quite certain to be damp. The plaster has not had time to dry. Damp houses favor the outburst of consumption, bronchitis, rheumatism, heart-disease, diphtheria. They harm adults, and even more do they harm the delicate constitutions of children. In England the municipalities are taking up the matter and are requiring proof that the building is safe for living in before it is allowed to be occupied, no matter how new it may be.
Here is a hint for those that are eager for new methods in church work, in school work, in the young people's society, in the Sunday school, in the home, in the political life, and in business life.
Let the plaster dry on the novel ideas. Let them be "tried out." Give time a chance to squeeze the water out of them. When you move into them too hastily you are liable to many ills. Not a few ministers of the gospel have ruined their usefulness by their haste to take up new methods. So have many public-school teachers and other workers.
I believe in novelty. It is the spice of life, but it is not the bread of life. A novelty just for its own sake is folly. A tested house, a house that has been lived in a while and has proved itself "livable," is worth a dozen of your wet-plastered shacks with the carpenter's shavings still lying around. Do not be old fogies, but be sensible; for good sense is good health, of soul and mind as well as body.
The Use of Dummies.
In the town where I live the street railway has been testing fenders.
One after the other, the various candidates from the Patent Office have been adjusted to the car, and have been put into practical operation.
This is what seemed to take place.
The car would rush down the track toward a man lying sprawled out across the iron rails. It would not lessen its speed a whit, but would dash upon him, pick him up with the fender, go on a little further, and then stop. And the crowd looking on would only laugh.
For the man was not a real man, but only an image stuffed with sand. If it had been a real man, what a series of tragedies would have taken place! His hands and arms would have been torn off. His legs would have been cut off. His chest would have been driven in. His head would have received innumerable blows. His entire body would have been macerated. Finally, to crown all, he would have been neatly decapitated. For all that happened to the sand man.
Not a fender worked. Not a fender but would have been a more deadly foe to human life than the car itself.
The incident furnishes a suggestive parable. In all matters of importance, before you commit yourself to any course or method, make a preliminary trial of it where it does not count. As the boys say, "Try it on the dog." Better, try it on the sand man.
Some are always ready for any new thing. It may be a new furnace, or a new style of garment, or a new minister, or a new kind of committee, or a new method of church work, or anew sort of society, or a new theory in politics, or a new magazine damp from the press. Presto! off goes their allegiance to the old, whether it be furnace or minister or method, and they have no voice or time or money for anything but the novel favorite.
Don't do that. Try it on the sand man first. You may discover that it has more hitches than sides, and more possibilities of failure than patents. Before you are through with your little experimentation, the sand man may leak from a dozen mortal wounds. And you may be ever so glad that he is not real flesh and blood.