The Saunterer

What the police officer told Genevieve Stone

    My Sauntering led me the other day to a reminder that social problems are solved by eroding them to nothing. What erosion lacks in speed, it makes up for in effectiveness. I am thinking of Mrs. Genevieve Stone, wife of Congressman Stone of Illinois, who when marching in a suffrage parade on March 3, 1913, Washington D.C., had an unidentified police officer tell her:

If my wife were where you are I’d break her head. (From Prelude to Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War, by Kimberly Jensen. University of Illinois Press, 2008.)

William Hazlitt on the true lover of Nature

    It is not enough to feel attachment to Nature. The true lover must also experience the sublime, the airy abstraction, the spirit of Nature, wrote William Hazlitt:

In our love of Nature there is all the force of individual attachment combined with the most airy abstraction. It is this circumstance which gives that refinement, expansion, and wild interest to feelings of this sort, when strongly excited, which every one must have experienced who is a true lover of Nature. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 173.)

    For a brief biography of William Hazlitt, click here.

G. H. Hardy on how to justify your existence and activities

    Justify yourself by this credo, advised Hardy:

I do what I do because it is the one and only thing that I can do at all well. I am a lawyer, or a stockbroker, or a professional cricketer, because I have some real talent for that particular job. I am a lawyer because I have a fluent tongue, and am interested in legal subtleties; I am a stockbroker because my judgment of the markets is quick and sound; I am a professional cricketer because I can bat unusually well. I agree that it might be better to be a poet or a mathematician, but unfortunately I have no talent for such pursuits. (From p. 67 of A Mathematician’s Apology, by G. H. Hardy. Cambridge University Press, 1967.)

    For a brief biography of G. H. Hardy, click here.

G. K. Chesterton on youth’s superficial view of the aged

    G. K. Chesterton insisted:

Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which you are accustomed to seeing or hearing without being shocked. . . . It may be that your grandmother was an extremely lively and vital animal, and that you are a paralytic. (From p. 48 of As I Was Saying, by G. K. Chesterton. New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co. 1936.)

    For a brief biography of G. K. Chesterton, click here.

Heinrich Harrer on the delayed awareness of happiness

    Reflecting on his climbs in the Alps, Heinrich Harrer reminded himself that being happy does not always register immediately:

We humans often experience happiness without recognizing it; later we realize that at such and such moment we were happy. (Quoted from The White Spider, by Heinrich Harrer. London: Granada. 1983. p. 113.)

    For a brief biography of Heinrich Harrer, click here.

William F. Buckley on how to give children a lifelong love of classical music

    In the 1930s, a tutor in music drilled a lifelong love of classical music into a half dozen children, including William F. Buckley Jr. He writes of how she did it:

The drill was four times a week. At four o’clock we came in from afternoon recreation and entered The Playroom. . . . The absolutely decisive feature of Miss Oyen’s discipline was very simple: darkness in the room. Not total darkness, else we’d have ended up playing Sardines. Too much light, and we’d have managed to read - anything, anything to avoid just . . . sitting there, listening to what I suppose in those days we’d have called “that darned music.” There was simply no escaping it. We just sat there, while the Capehart [phonograph] blared away, and the ordeal lasted one whole hour.

    And, of course . . . it happened. I’d say it took, depending on the individual child’s latent inclinations, between four and eight months. My oldest brother, John (RIP), was ejected from our tutorial system in the fifth month to go to boarding school, and the result was that he never got around to enjoying beautiful music. I am willing to bet that if he had stayed with Miss Oyen another two months, he’d have become an addict, which is what happened to the rest of us. (Quoted from Miles Gone By, by William F. Buckley Jr. Washington: Regnery Publishing, Inc. 2004. p. 14-15.)

    For a brief biography of William F. Buckley Jr., click here.

Henry David Thoreau on sensualists

    Just as no one can be part pregnant, no one can be part sensualist. Hear Henry David Thoreau:

All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 321.)

    For a brief biography of Henry David Thoreau, click here.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's reverence for all animals

    Samuel Taylor Coleridge had a soft spot for animals. It shows in these lines from his poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

    To read the full poem, click here. For a brief biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, click here.

Herman Melville’s typical day

    We thought you might find it interesting to compare a recent typical day in your life with a typical day in Herman Melville’s life in 1850. He described his in a letter he wrote to Evert A. Duyckinck on December 13, 1850:

Do you want to know how I pass my time? - I rise at eight - thereabouts - & go to my barn - say good-morning to the horse, & give him his breakfast. (It goes to my heart to give him a cold one, but it can’t be helped) Then, pay a visit to my cow - cut up a pumpkin or two for her, & stand by to see her eat it - for it’s a pleasant sight to see a cow move her jaws - she does it so mildly & and with such a sanctity. - My own breakfast over, I go to my workroom & light my fire - then spread my M.S.S. on the table - take one business squint at it, & fall to with a will. At 2 ½ P.M. I hear a preconcerted knock at my door, which (by request) continues till I rise & go to the door, which serves to wean me effectively from my writing, however interested I may be. My friends the horse & cow now demand their dinner - & I go & give it them. My own dinner over, I rig my sleigh & with my mother or sisters start off for the village - & if it be a Literary World day, great is the satisfaction thereof. - My evenings I spend in a sort of mesmeric state in my room - not being able to read - only now & then skimming over some large-printed book. (Quoted from Correspondence, Herman Melville. Northwestern University Press, 1993, p. 174)

    For a brief biography of Herman Melville, click here.

David Attenborough on how to observe the natural world

    There is a profound joy that can come from observing the natural world; the key to making it come is to observe with a sustained and devoted intensity. This idea came to me in one of my pleasant Sauntering hours of the recent past, reading Sir David Attenborough’s remark about an exhibition of artists whose works evoke the wonder of nature (The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, 14 March – 21 September 2008):

There is a common denominator that links all these artists. It is the profound joy that all feel who observe the natural world with a sustained and devoted intensity.

    For a brief biography of Sir David Attenborough, click here.