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Side 7 av 112
Leave the metaphysics of the question on the table for the present.
As a matter of fact, it is plain that our human nature is adapted to
conditions variable, undetermined, and hidden from our view. We are
not fitted to live in a world where a + b always equals c, and there
is nothing more to follow. The interest of life's equation arrives
with the appearance of x, the unknown quantity. A settled,
unchangeable, clearly foreseeable order of things does not suit our
constitution. It tends to melancholy and a fatty heart. Creatures
of habit we are undoubtedly; but it is one of our most fixed habits
to be fond of variety. The man who is never surprised does not know
the taste of happiness, and unless the unexpected sometimes happens
to us, we are most grievously disappointed.
Much of the tediousness of highly civilized life comes from its
smoothness and regularity. To-day is like yesterday, and we think
that we can predict to-morrow. Of course we cannot really do so.
The chances are still there. But we have covered them up so deeply
with the artificialities of life that we lose sight of them. It
seems as if everything in our neat little world were arranged, and
provided for, and reasonably sure to come to pass. The best way of
escape from this TAEDIUM VITAE is through a recreation like angling,
not only because it is so evidently a matter of luck, but also
because it tempts us into a wilder, freer life. It leads almost
inevitably to camping out, which is a wholesome and sanitary
imprudence.
It is curious and pleasant, to my apprehension, to observe how many
people in New England, one of whose States is called "the land of
Steady Habits," are sensible of the joy of changing them,--out of
doors. These good folk turn out from their comfortable farm-houses
and their snug suburban cottages to go a-gypsying for a fortnight
among the mountains or beside the sea. You see their white tents
gleaming from the pine-groves around the little lakes, and catch
glimpses of their bathing-clothes drying in the sun on the wiry
grass that fringes the sand-dunes. Happy fugitives from the bondage
of routine! They have found out that a long journey is not
necessary to a good vacation. You may reach the Forest of Arden in
a buckboard. The Fortunate Isles are within sailing distance in a
dory. And a voyage on the river Pactolus is open to any one who can
paddle a canoe.
I was talking--or rather listening--with a barber, the other day, in
the sleepy old town of Rivermouth. He told me, in one of those easy
confidences which seem to make the razor run more smoothly, that it
had been the custom of his family, for some twenty years past, to
forsake their commodious dwelling on Anchor Street every summer, and
emigrate six miles, in a wagon to Wallis Sands, where they spent the
month of August very merrily under canvas. Here was a sensible
household for you! They did not feel bound to waste a year's income
on a four weeks' holiday. They were not of those foolish folk who
run across the sea, carefully carrying with them the same tiresome
mind that worried them at home. They got a change of air by making
an alteration of life. They escaped from the land of Egypt by
stepping out into the wilderness and going a-fishing.
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