City Man, 94, Has Never Seen a Movie

1920

Prefers to Live in Fond Memories of the Past

HARLAN, Iowa — William Blair of this city, 94 years old, and still bright of eye and keen of mind, has never seen a moving picture. For more than ten years he has lived within a few blocks of the local picture show, but could never be induced to attend.

His reasons are unique. He says: "I've lived longer than most men. Maybe I haven't traveled so much nor seen so many wonderful sights, but I've sure seen 'em plenty as far as I went. I suppose I've got as much out of livin' as any man and I don't care for any new fandangles. I just want to set here with my pipe and read the papers, and live over the pleasant places I've passed and forget the hard places as much as I can."

He was born in Virginia in 1825, on Thanksgiving day, and Thanksgiving day has been his birthday ever since, no matter on what date it fell.

Do We Hurry Too Much?

1914

Some learned doctors tell us periodically that we all eat too much meat nowadays considering how sedentary are the lives we lead; others affirm that no diseases would be known were we to live — or to exist — on morsels of nearly raw meat, washed down, by copious draughts of hot water.

There are those who commend cheese, milk, nuts and greens. There are others who find peace in chewing whatever it is they eat for hours and hours. Smoking is the alleged destruction of some; others find in it their salvation. Alcohol embalms one section of humanity unto extreme old age, preserving them; another section is brought to horrid death by means of alcohol.

We know these divergences in medical opinion and conceive that there can be no reconciliation between them, and that therefore the one thing to do is to toss up and follow a single course, which, on the whole, had better be the thing you best like. If you enjoy nuts and proteid, why, enjoy them.

A General Opinion

Meanwhile, there is, we find, one point upon which pretty nearly all our experts are agreed. It is that, whatever we eat, we all hurry too much.

A nerve specialist at an instructive conference has recently renewed the accusation. He has repeated it for the ten thousandth time. He has run two words together to name the malady of it; he has called us all "can't-waiters," because of our fever to get on to the next thing in the day's work.

How is it that we suffer from an inability to believe a thing that is too often repeated?

The more we hear a certain truth, somehow, the less true it is apt to become for us. Now, do we, indeed, hurry so much? Are we most of us "can't-waiters"?

Taking It Easy

Observe. Follow, with feet anxious to progress, the throng of moving creatures on some fine spring day when, as the poet tells us, the feet are eager to wander. Let us get on quickly. We have much to get through.

How is this? Nobody else, apparently, is in a similar case. They all move slowly. They stop. They stop and gaze at anything there is to gaze at. They stop in the middle of the pavement. They are in no hurry. They have the day before them — the day to talk in, to dream in, to gaze open-mouthed in, to moon about in the subways and in the trains and in the streets, supposed to be "busy."

Try, if you really are in a hurry, to get past them. You cannot. Where all (apparently) have leisure, what are one or two with something to do? A minority of "can't-waiters" are nothing to the vast majority of those who apparently have nothing to do. The neologism is ugly enough. There seem to be thousands who are nowadays in no hurry to get anywhere, who destroy the nerves of the "can't-waiters" far more successfully than the mere fact of not waiting does for the insignificant few.

Changes in Weddings — Fewer Vows Made "To Obey"

1910

OMISSIONS AT THE ALTAR

Many Brides Who Now Refuse Make the Verbal Promise of Obedience

This year, as usual, some of the June brides got into the newspapers by refusing to make the verbal promise of obedience "till death us do part," as required by "The Form of Solemnization of Matrimony," specified in the Book of Common Prayer.

The full ceremony includes the exaction of a vow to "serve him," likewise, "so long as ye both shall live;" and it furthermore comprises several admonitions quoted from St. Paul and St. Peter, all to the one effect, wifely subjection. Any other point of view could hardly have been expected from spokesmen of the first century oriental community, particularly not from St. Peter, who himself was married, and who would, therefore, probably not have wished to upset an ancient, popular tradition no less convenient for his sex — than venerable.

Despite the eastern origin of its faith, the Christian world has managed to de-orientalize itself a good deal in nineteen hundred years, and the flavor of orientalism, which, quite naturally, attaches to the "Solemnization of Matrimony," is not now entirely to the taste of all western women — or men. But aren't the fair modern occidental Protestants rather illogical? They refuse to promise "to obey" a man for a single minute, although obedience is purely an act of volition, not requiring the smallest regard or respect for the person obeyed, or even acquaintance with him. On the other hand, the brides find it easy to swear "to love" a man forever, although love is a thing completely beyond control of the will!

Deign, if you please, Mesdames les Divorcees and others, to acknowledge that the great fundamental reason of marital discord, infelicity and wreck is the cessation of that feeling "to love," whose perpetual continuance it appears so very easy to pledge. Moreover, nobody ever alleges post-nuptial disinclination or even refusal "to obey" as a sufficient provocation for divorce. Of those two covenants, why object to the lightest? — Collier's.

When the Waltz Was New

1916

I have a letter in my possession written by a friend to my great-grandmother in the year 1817, at Christmas time, in which the lady expresses her grave disapproval of the "modern" tendency toward rapid dancing. The paragraph runs as follows:

"I was yester evening at your Cousin Betty's, where I was much struck with the new fashioned dances, which seemed, to me at any rate, to be out of keeping with the propriety and modesty which we look for in young ladies of our class. I can only regret the disappearance of those 'mazurkas' and 'gavottes' as well as the 'minuets' and hope that these new dances or 'valses,' as I think they are named, will quickly disappear from respectable society." —Letter in London Telegraph

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 3.