Florida Pier : writings and about / jmcvey.net
Careless Folk, Etc.
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (June 18, 1910) : 27
U Michigan copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
archive.org : link
Careless people are not really careless — that is, not if the careless person under discussion is oneself, though, to be sure, other people do things for which there is no excuse that must be put down just to plain carelessness. Their eyes do not record accurately, and that is a handicap for which they should be sin- cerely pitied. A time-table reads 4.30 when they look at it, and all the time they are waiting for the 5.02; after the 4.20 has gone the figures 4.20 dance plainly before their eyes. It is explained to doubting listeners that this particular, special time-table of theirs at home said 4.30, in spite of the fact that all the time-tables at the station say 4.20. It is not that they wish to deny to its face the time-table now held before them. Willingly they admit that it says 4.20, which makes the one they possess an even more curious specimen. Perhaps it is attributable to a misprint, or it may be that it is just the only time-table of its kind, but either way they still see in their mind’s eye the exact way that 4.30 looked. The figures stand out so distinctly that it is a surprise to them on their return to experience a nervous dread as suspicious souls demand to see that unique time-table. They go to their desk to pull it forth. As their hand gropes for it a prayer rises in their heart that the figures may not have changed. Desperately they beg them to stand by. If they have any feeling at all, any gratitude for having been housed so comfortably in the best pigeonhole, they will rise to the occasion and look as they did before. Hesitatingly the eye falls upon them, with a sinking heart one sees them now as 4.20, and amid a taunting chorus one leadenly knows oneself, not as a careless person, but as a frequently betrayed one.
Then the often-brought charge that you lose things — how unjust that is. Is it your fault, can it be in any way attributed to you that brooches deliberately unclasp and work and wiggle themselves loose, finally falling without the warning click that the pins of other people make? When it happens at the back of one’s neck, it really seems a matter purely between the pin and Providence, and it is a little too much that one should both loose the pin and be blamed for the loss. When it happens at the back of one’s neck, it really seems a matter purely between the pin and Providence, and it is a little too much that one should both loose the pin and be blamed for the loss from which one is suffering deeply. It is a great misfortune to have such a loosening effect on brooches, but it is not a crime. It does not justify the names that are hurled at one. A cripple is not upbraided for having lost a leg, and a so-called careless person is just as keenly anxious to retain the pretty things that are given her as the cripple his leg, but she cannot; they refuse to stay on, and she is powerless before such self-willed things.
It is not as though a lifetime of carefulness could eradicate one time-table misread or, say, a dozen brooches lost. This is almost the worst phase of the subject. The smallest incident establishes a reputation for carelessness, and no one has ever been known to notice that your bad ways are all outgrown and that every bit of jewelry on you bristles with circumspection. One could catch one train after another and never get the least bit of credit for it. No one ever shakes you by the hand and says with acceptable geniality: “Well done! My heartiest congratulations! I see you are still carrying the same old umbrella.” A word of encouragement helps so, but it is never given. A fatalistic attitude is eventually taken toward one’s losses, and, even though one sees a pin going, one makes no attempt to stop its course. Experience has shown that it will go sooner or later. Its determination is a thing against which you are helpless. Again and again you have pitted yourself against some trumpery bit of jewelry, and every time it has won. Now, sadly, you refrain from action. You see it unclasp, you smile wanly; true to your belief in the necessity of individual freedom, you stand bravely aside and wish the pin Godspeed.
There is a gleam of hope in all this — and that is that, all proper cities having buried cities under them, and, when a city is inundated with a sufficient number of hairpins, handkerchiefs, brooches, and umbrellas, a new city being begun on top, it stands to reason that the work we careless people are doing is very necessary, and that we must continue in our martyrdom for many a year to come, if we ever expect to get New York down to a level where she can be excavated by those grubbing people who mouse about in the Roman Forum.
The coldness with which we regard another person’s collection is quite enough to make collectors insist upon having their beloved stamps, coins, and butterflies buried with them. The coldness with which we regard another person’s collection is quite enough to make collectors insist upon having their beloved stamps, coins, and butterflies buried with them. The unsympathetic eye cast upon specimens not of our own gathering would be so terrible to contemplate.
It almost seems that all houses with unappreciated collections in them must be haunted by their one-time owners, called from wherever they were by a desire to comfort their neglected treasures, held to this earth by a frenzy of concern over lost labels and disarranged sequences. A collection is so fondled, its every blemish mourned over, and its every rarity exhibited to advantage, that the leaving of them to museums seems a last effort to preserve them from the bored sufferance of one’s family — an attempt made to put them where they will be displayed with that considered neatness so dear to the collector’s heart, and perhaps оссаsionally seen by some one who will understand and gloat over them. It is the rare and problematical gloat that is in the collector’s mind when he bequeaths his possessions to a museum. He so earnestly desires to secure a gloat or two for these things that have long given him such pleasure. They have grown used to care and admiration. He took them from the turmoil of the market where they had to stand the indignities of competition and pressing questionings, and surrounded them with every comfort. They have grown independent and are no longer able to fight for themselves. He does not present them to the public out of care for the public’s needs; he calls the public to his aid and, throwing himself on its mercy, begs that it will do its best to spend a Sunday afternoon now and then with his necessarily lonely collection. If the sanctuary of a museum cannot be secured, it is better to destroy one’s things, and so save them from feeling that they take up a great deal of room and collect a distressing amount of dust, which is followed by a realization that their cases ruin the appearance of the halls, until, when a certain number of years have passed, the collection has made itself so disliked that the memory of its maker is tarnished, and that point reached, every last specimen is bundled up to the attic to lie dishevelled and disconsolate, waiting for a more humiliating and final fate.
20260923