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Show J j j To Disperse Music Here on July Fourth ."! !'' " ".'H J f - - . . ' - y- wf' kiVw . Nr. v an old man. And we have seen octogenarians octo-genarians whose enthusiasms put them in a class with their grandsons. ENTHUSIASM KEEPS ALIVE THE PULSE OF THE WORLD Enthusiasm is a fine auality that is falling into disrepute. It is becoming becom-ing more and more the fashion to distrust the generous impulses and the candid emotions and to lay store only by the tepid processes of the brain. "Think before you leap," is a good maxim, but like all good things in can be followed to a point beyond which sufficiency shades into surfeit. Caution carried too far becomes cowardice. cow-ardice. This generation is in danger of growing overcautious. There is a distinctly dis-tinctly visible tendency to bottle up the emotions. The smart attitude is the blase attitude. Every woodpile is suspected of a dusky inhabitant, every ointment of a fly. One must not take one's job, or one's life or anything else, too seriously, Frank enthusiasm encounters the shrugging shoulder and the twitching eyebrow. It is rebuked with the epithet, "Childish!" A current and undeniably popular school of literature undertakes under-takes to preach the text that nothing really matters. It is all wrongl When Rome was enthusiastic Rome was great. When she lost her vim she crashed and the exuberance of the Gauls and the Saxons Sax-ons triumphed. Probably the greatest great-est period Britain ever knew was the Elizabethan Age. And the distinguishing distinguish-ing characteristic of that transcen-dant transcen-dant epoch was enthusiasm. About the only noteworthy dif- ference between youth and age is a difference in degree of enthusiasm. Youth, in its eagerness makes a hundred hun-dred false steps to one that age makes. But age seldom steps at all, or if it does it takes a pace to the rear. Enthusiasm leads men into trouble. But it leads them out again. Indifference Indif-ference does not lead to trouble; it lets trouble catch up with it and cannot muster the strength to outstrip out-strip it again. It atrophies the muscles mus-cles of the brain. It deadens the resiliency re-siliency of the spirit. It kills resource and enterprise and checkmates progress. pro-gress. Give enthusiasm a chance. You need not follow it blindly. But dont quash it just because it is enthusiasm. Rather cultivate it and make it work I for you. The man who is blase I whether he be twenty or seventy, is |
