The Simple Life

The Simple Life, by Charles Wagner

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Title: The Simple Life
Author: Charles Wagner
Translator: Mary Louise Hendee
Release Date: October 20, 2007 [EBook #23092]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE SIMPLE LIFE
By CHARLES WAGNER Author of The Better Way
Translated from the French by Mary Louise Hendee
GROSSET & DUNLAP Publishers, New York
Copyright, 1901, by McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.

CONTENTS
Page
I. OUR COMPLEX LIFE 1
II. THE ESSENCE OF SIMPLICITY 15
III. SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT 22
IV. SIMPLICITY OF SPEECH 39
V. SIMPLE DUTY 52
VI. SIMPLE NEEDS 68
VII. SIMPLE PLEASURES 80
VIII. THE MERCENARY SPIRIT AND SIMPLICITY 96
IX. NOTORIETY AND THE INGLORIOUS GOOD 111
X. THE WORLD AND THE LIFE OF THE HOME 128
XI. SIMPLE BEAUTY 139
XII. PRIDE AND SIMPLICITY IN THE INTERCOURSE OF MEN 151
XIII. THE EDUCATION FOR SIMPLICITY 167
XIV. CONCLUSION 188

THE SIMPLE LIFE
I
OUR COMPLEX LIFE
At the home of the Blanchards, everything is topsy-turvy, and with reason. Think of it! Mlle. Yvonne is to be married Tuesday, and to-day is Friday!
Callers loaded with gifts, and tradesmen bending under packages, come and go in endless procession. The servants are at the end of their endurance. As for the family and the betrothed, they no longer have a life or a fixed abode. Their mornings are spent with dressmakers, milliners, upholsterers, jewelers, decorators, and caterers. After that, comes a rush through offices, where one waits in line, gazing vaguely at busy clerks engulfed in papers. A fortunate thing, if there be time when this is over, to run home and dress for the series of ceremonial dinners--betrothal dinners, dinners of presentation, the settlement dinner, receptions, balls. About midnight, home again, harassed and weary, to find the latest accumulation of parcels, and a deluge of letters--congratulations, felicitations, acceptances and regrets from bridesmaids and ushers, excuses of tardy tradesmen. And the contretemps of the last minute--a sudden death that disarranges the bridal party; a wretched cold that prevents a favorite cantatrice from singing, and so forth, and so forth. Those poor Blanchards! They will never be ready, and they thought they had foreseen everything!
Such has been their existence for a month. No longer possible to breathe, to rest a half-hour, to tranquillize one's thoughts. No, this is not living!
Mercifully, there is Grandmother's room. Grandmother is verging on eighty. Through many toils and much suffering, she has come to meet things with the calm assurance which life brings to men and women of high thinking and large hearts. She sits there in her arm-chair, enjoying the silence of long meditative hours. So the flood of affairs surging through the house, ebbs at her door. At the threshold of this retreat, voices are hushed and footfalls softened; and when the young fianc��s want to hide away for a moment, they flee to Grandmother.
"Poor children!" is her greeting. "You are worn out! Rest a little and belong to each other. All these things count for nothing. Don't let them absorb you, it isn't worth while."
They know it well, these two young people. How many times in the last weeks has their love had to make way for all sorts of conventions and futilities! Fate, at this decisive moment of their lives, seems bent upon drawing their minds away from the one thing essential, to harry them with a host of trivialities; and heartily do they approve the opinion of Grandmamma when she says, between a smile and a caress:
"Decidedly, my dears, the world is growing too complex; and it does not make people happier--quite the contrary!"
* * * * *
I also, am of Grandmamma's opinion. From the cradle to the grave, in his needs as in his pleasures, in his conception of the world and of himself, the man of modern times struggles through a maze of endless complication. Nothing is simple any longer: neither thought nor action; not pleasure, not even dying. With our own hands we have added to existence a train of hardships, and lopped off many a gratification. I believe that thousands of our fellow-men, suffering the consequences of a too artificial life, will be grateful if we try to give expression to their discontent, and to justify the regret for naturalness which vaguely oppresses them.
Let us first speak of a series of facts that put into relief the truth we wish to show.
The complexity of our life appears in the number of our material needs. It is a fact universally conceded, that our needs have grown with our