It must have flown in through a
broken pane on the ground floor long ago and swooped vainly about
the empty house. It lay, pathetically, close against the shut pane.
Like a forgotten and un-uttered beauty in the mind of a poet, it lay
there, stiffened and silent.
[Illustration]
CONSIDER THE COMMUTER
When they tell us the world is getting worse and worse, and the
follies and peevishness of men will soon bring us all to some
damnable perdition, we are consoled by contemplating the steadfast
virtue of commuters. The planet grows harder and harder to live on,
it is true; every new invention makes things more complicated and
perplexing. These new automatic telephones, which are said to make
the business of getting a number so easy, will mean (we suppose)
that we will be called up fifty times a day--instead of (as now) a
mere twenty or thirty, while we are swooning and swinking over a
sonnet. But more and more people are taking to commuting and we look
to that to save things.
Because commuting is a tough and gruelling discipline. It educes
all the latent strength and virtue in a man (although it is hard on
those at home, for when he wins back at supper time there is left in
him very little of what the ladies so quaintly call "soul"). If you
study the demeanour of fellow-passengers on the 8:04 and the 5:27
you will see a quiet and well-drilled acceptiveness, a pious
non-resistance, which is not unworthy of the antique Chinese sages.
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