How Vainly Men Themselves Amaze

(by Herbert Ernest Bates)

The sand on the seaward side of the dunes glittered like fine white sugar in the sun. A plastic ball, in white and yellow stripes rolled softly and with deceptive slowness from one dry tuft of dune grass to another, not at all unlike a big bored snail, until suddenly a sharper gust of breeze caught it and tossed it bouncing high across the shore.

For the third time that morning young Franklin raced after it, retrieved it and took it back to the auburn-haired woman in the two piece emerald swim-suit sitting at the foot of the dunes. For the third time too she waved her orange-pink nails in the air in protest, smiling with lips of the same colour at the same time.

“Oh! This is becoming an awful bore for you. It really is. Thank you all the same – it’s awfully sweet of you – but next time just let it go.”

“That’s all right – I’m not doing anything.”

“Can’t you see those children of mine anywhere or that wretched German girl? She’s supposed to look after the ball.”

“I think I saw them going that way, towards the pines. I think they were gathering shells.”

“Anything useless, of course. That’s these girls all over. Anything useless.”

He stood looking down at her, feeling slightly awkward, still holding the ball in his hands. She was a beautifully boned woman, about forty, evenly tanned to a deep gold, her stomach flat, her navel a delicate shadowy shell. Beside her on the sand stood a straw basket stuffed with a pink towel; a pair of yellow beach shoes and a yellow scarf, together with a second flatter basket of bananas, peaches and pears. With her long orange-pink finger tips she patted the sand beside her and said:

“May I offer you some fruit? I feel I somehow ought to reward you for all your tiresome dashing up and down. Anyway, sit down, won’t you?”

He hesitated, awkward again, not knowing what to do with the ball.

“Oh! Let the wretched ball go. It’s a confounded nuisance. I feel I never want to see it again.”

Essay

Love – Luxury or Necessity (Condensed from Delineator)

(By Katherine Anthony)

“He who takes love into his tent takes troubles.” No one will doubt that this is true; but an empty tent is not always an easy one to make. Anyone who is strong-minded enough to choose independence and solitude is often deemed lucky by those who have chosen the more turbulent life. But to be wholly emancipated from love or the need of loving is to be abnormal.

No one really strives in a wholly industrialized environment or in a purely intellectual career. This truth might have been deduced long ago by observing babies, from whom much can be learned about human nature. The need is not a temporary one; it begins in infancy and continues throughout life. The most materialistic science in the world, that of medicine, has been forced to admit that the human baby must be loved in order to live. He has fewer chances to survive in the sterilized ward than a germy tenement house. The baby needs personal affection more than anything else. He must be “mothered” by a mother who is all his own. A baby deprived of this is likely to perish from sheer emotional starvation, or else grow up into a pathetically distorted soul – a source of anxiety to everybody.

The later undergoes an evolutionary growth, but it does not vanish. The baby is a creature that must be loved rather than a creature capable of loving. To develop this second ability, he needs to live in an atmosphere in which this mature kind of love is practiced. If his parents failed to chew, to walk or to speak, he would probably be backward in the acquisition of these arts. If his parents fail to furnish him with the example of love, he is desperately off. He may see the neighbors walk, and talk, and chew; but the subtle art of generous affection is usually demonstrated best before one’s family.

At the adult level, nobody can live wholly in a job. Too many persons are trying to do so. They think they can dispense with mate relationships and get along with the casual personal contacts of the job and the club. How much better if we admit our need of love and affection and then try to build up these relationships in the full light of self-knowledge. Personal attachments are necessary. Why call the world heartless if we have never looked for hearts in the only place where they occur – in the individual human bosom?

Love is not merely a plaything of romantic dispositions; it belongs in the practical view of life. Love is a necessity, not a luxury. Henry Drummond uttered a profound truth when he said. “It is the deliberate verdict of the Lord Jesus that it is better not to live than not to love.”

But, says someone, the beneficent effect of love is true enough for those who are fortunate enough to find it on their way; the trouble is that not everyone is so lucky. Here lies a fundamental misconception. Love is not so much a matter of learning. But we can learn a good deal if we understand from the start that the thing is learnable.

There is a current superstition that men have no emotional needs, that only the feminine temperament hungers for affection. The false idea that strength of character and force of will are based on sterility of the affections and aridity of the emotions still stubbornly prevails. Yet it is no more true about men than it is about women; a heartless man is just as abnormal as a heartless woman.

Love is the greatest therapeutic agent in the world. It is the greatest corrective of the exaggerated eccentricities of character. As it helps to prevent many kinds of mental disease, it also helps to cure them. The different kinds of neuroses are divided practically into curable and incurable, according to whether the unhappy victim can be reached through his affections or not. The mentally sick person is wrapped up in himself.

Love means sacrifice, but it produces a well-balanced personality. The importance of love is demonstrated more by the disasters which follow upon its absence than by the things which happen when it takes its normal place in life. As with many other vital necessities, we are scarcely conscious of its presence. But let it once cease, and the personality falls into disintegration. Love is not cheap, but we must choose to pay the cost, for life demands at least that much heroism from all of us.

Список статей для реферування:

“Неземні мільйони для України” (газета “Київ Weekly”)

“До міліції не звертайтеся!” (газета “ Київ Weekly ”)

“Брудна політика може стати чистим бізнесом” (газета “ Київ Weekly”)

“Навчатися і творити граючи” (газета “Історія України”)

“П’ятнадцять років за хабар”

“Огляд бізнес преси”

“Перебільшені чутки”(газета «День»)

“Проблема вибору. До влади в Палестині прийшли радикали».

“Чорна мітка” (газета “Укр. освіта”)

“Мат у законі, або як недруковане слово стало друкованим” (газета “Дзеркало тижня”)

“ДАЇ підвищить штрафи удесятеро” газета “ Київ Weekly ”)

“Всесвітній День охорони здоров’я: медицини в Україні”

“Техогляд” для вчителів” (газета “День”)

“В Україні набуває популярності підлідний дайвінг ” (газета “ Київ Weekly ”)

“Шокова терапія зовнішнього оцінювання ” (газета “Дзеркало тижня”)

Зразок статті для реферування: