All Trivia: A Collection of Reflections & Aphorisms

Logan Pearsall Smith

Description

All Trivia gathers brief and often humorous observations on life, happiness, religion, art, science, music, beauty, and modern life.

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Développement personnel
• développement personnel
• Personal Growth
• Self-help

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 11 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781774644706
• Langue: English

Extrait

All Trivia
Logan Pearsall Smith

First published in 1917
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
[e-mail]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
All Trivia
by LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH

The Author

These pieces of moral prose have been written, dear Reader, by a largeCarnivorous Mammal, belonging to that suborder of the Animal Kingdomwhich includes also the Orang-outang, the tusked Gorilla, the Baboonwith his bright blue and scarlet bottom, and the gentle Chimpanzee.

Book One

'How blest my lot, in these sweet fields assign'd Where Peace and Leisure soothe the tuneful mind.'
Scott , of Amwell, Moral Eclogues (1773).
PREFACE

'You must beware of thinking too much about Style,' said my kindlyadviser, 'or you will become like those fastidious people who polish andpolish away until there is nothing left.'
'Then there really are such people?' I asked eagerly. But thewell-informed lady could give me no precise information about them.
I often hear of them in this tantalizing manner, and perhaps one ofthese days I shall have the luck to come across them.
TRIVIA
Happiness
Cricketers on village greens, hay-makers in the evening sunshine, smallboats that sail before the wind—all these create in me the illusion ofHappiness, as if a land of cloudless pleasure, a piece of the old GoldenWorld, were hidden, not (as poets have fancied) in far seas or beyondinaccessible mountains, but here close at hand, if one could find it, insome valley. Certain grassy lanes seem to lead through the copsesthither; the wild pigeons talk of it behind the woods.
Today
I woke this morning out of dreams into what we call Reality, into thedaylight, the furniture of my familiar bedroom—in fact into thewell-known, often-discussed, but, to my mind, as yet unexplainedUniverse.
Then I, who came out of the Eternal Silence and seem to be on my waythither, got up and spent the day as I usually spend it. I read, Ipottered, I complained, and took exercise; and I sat punctually down toeat the cooked meals that appeared at regular intervals.
The Afternoon Post
The village Post Office, with its clock and letter-box, its postmistresslost in the heartless seductions of the Aristocracy and tales ofcoroneted woe, and the sallow-faced grocer watching from his windowopposite, is the scene of a daily crisis in my life, when everyafternoon my Soul and I walk there through the country lanes and askthat well-read young lady for my letters. We always expect good news andcheques; and then, of course, there is the magical Fortune which iscoming, and word of it may reach me any day. What it is, this strangeFelicity, or whence it shall arrive, I have no notion; but I hurry downin the morning to find the news on the breakfast table, open telegramsin delighted panic, and cry, 'Here it comes!' when in the night-silenceI hear wheels approaching along the road. So, happy in the hope ofHappiness, and not greatly concerned with any other interest orambition, we live on in my quiet, ordered house; and so we shall liveperhaps until the end. Is it merely the last great summons andrevelation for which we are waiting?
The Busy Bees
Sitting for hours idle in the shade of an apple tree, near thegarden-hives, and under the aerial thoroughfares of thosehoney-merchants,—sometimes when the noonday heat is loud with theirminute industry, or when they fall in crowds out of the late sun totheir night-long labours,—I have sought instruction from the Bees, andtried to appropriate to myself the old industrious lesson.
And yet, hang it all, who by rights should be the teacher and who thelearners? For those peevish, over-toiled, utilitarian insects, was thereno lesson to be derived from the spectacle of Me? Gazing out at me withcomposite eyes from their joyless factories, might they not learn atlast—could I not finally teach them—a wiser and more generous-heartedway to improve the shining hours?
The Wheat
The Vicar, whom I met once or twice in my walks about the fields, toldme that he was glad that I was taking an interest in farming. Only myfeeling about wheat, he said, puzzled him.
Now the feeling in regard to wheat which I had not been able to makeclear to the Vicar, was simply one of amazement. Walking one day into afield that I had watched yellowing beyond the trees, I was dazzled bythe glow and great expanse of gold. I bathed myself in the intenseyellow under the intense blue sky; how it dimmed the oak trees andcopses and all the rest of the English landscape! I had not rememberedthe glory of the Wheat; nor imagined in my reading that in a country sofar from the Sun, there could be anything so rich, so prodigal, soreckless, as this opulence of ruddy gold, bursting out from the crackedearth as from some fiery vein beneath. I remembered how for thousands ofyears Wheat had been the staple of wealth, the hoarded wealth of famouscities and empires; I thought of the processes of corn-growing, thewhite oxen ploughing, the great barns, the winnowing fans, the millswith the splash of their wheels, or arms slow-turning in the wind; ofcornfields at harvest-time, with shocks and sheaves in the glow ofsunset, or under the sickle moon; what beauty it brought into thenorthern landscape, the antique, passionate, Biblical beauty of theSouth!
The Coming of Fate
When I seek out the sources of my thoughts, I find they had theirbeginning in fragile Chance; were born of little moments that shine forme curiously in the past. Slight the impulse that made me take thisturning at the crossroads, trivial and fortuitous the meeting, and lightas gossamer the thread that first knit me to my friend. These are fullof wonder; more mysterious are the moments that must have brushed meevanescently with their wings and passed me by: when Fate beckoned and Idid not see it, when new Life trembled for a second on the threshold;but the word was not spoken, the hand was not held out, and theMight-have-been shivered and vanished, dim as a dream, into the wasterealms of non-existence.
So I never lose a sense of the whimsical and perilous charm of dailylife, with its meetings and words and accidents. Why, today, perhaps, ornext week, I may hear a voice, and, packing up my Gladstone bag, followit to the ends of the world.
My Speech
'Ladies and Gentlemen,' I began—
The Vicar was in the chair; Mrs. La Mountain and her daughters satfacing us; and in the little schoolroom, with its maps and largeScripture prints, its blackboard with the day's sums still visible onit, were assembled the labourers of the village, the old family coachmanand his wife, the one-eyed postman, and the gardeners and boys from theHall. Having culled from the newspapers a few phrases, I had composed aspeech which I delivered with a spirit and eloquence surprising even tomyself. The Vicar cried, 'Hear, Hear!' the Vicar's wife pounded herumbrella with such emphasis, and the villagers cheered so heartily, thatmy heart was warmed. I began to feel the meaning of my own words; Ibeamed on the audience, felt that they were all my brothers, all wishedwell to the Republic; and it seemed to me an occasion to divulge my realideas and hopes for the Commonwealth.
Brushing therefore to one side, and indeed quite forgetting my safeprinciples, I began to refashion and new-model the State. Most existinginstitutions were soon abolished; and then, on their ruins, I built upthe bright walls and palaces of the City within me—the City I had readof in Plato. With enthusiasm, and, I flatter myself, with eloquence, Idescribed it all—the Warriors, that race of golden youth bred from theState-ordered embraces of the brave and the fair; those philosophicGuardians, who, being ever accustomed to the highest and most extensiveviews, and thence contracting an habitual greatness, possessed thetruest fortitude, looking down indeed with a kind of disregard on humanlife and death. And then, declaring that the pattern of this City waslaid up in Heaven, I sat down, amid the cheers of the uncomprehendinglittle audience.
And afterward, in my rides about the country, when I saw on walls andthe doors of barns, among advertisements of sales, or regulations aboutbirds' eggs or the movements of swine, little weather-beaten,old-looking notices on which it was stated that I would address themeeting, I remembered how the walls and towers of the City I built up inthat little schoolroom had shone with no heavenly light in the eyes ofthe Vicar's party.
Stonehenge
There they sit for ever around the horizon of my mind, that Stonehengecircle of elderly disapproving Faces—Faces of the Uncles, andSchoolmasters and the Tutors who frowned on my youth.
In the bright center and sunlight I leap, I caper, I dance my dance; butwhen I look up, I see they are not deceived. For nothing ever placatesthem, nothing ever moves to a look of approval that ring of bleak, old,contemptuous Faces.
My Portrait
But after all I am no amoeba, no mere sack and stomach; I am capable ofdiscourse, can ride a bicycle, look up trains in Bradshaw; in fact I amand calmly boast myself a Human Being—that Masterpiece of Nature, andnoblest fruit of time;—I am a rational, polite, meat-eating Man.
What stellar collisions and conflagrations, what floods and slaughtersand enormous efforts has it not cost the Universe to make me—of whatastral periods and cosmic processes am I not the crown, the wonder?
Where, then, is the Esplanade or world-dominating Terrace for my sublimeStatue; the landscape of palaces and triumphal arches for the backgroundof my Portrait; stairs of marble, flung against the sunset, not toonarrow and ignoble for me to pause with ample gesture on theirbalu