The Complete Essays of John GalsworthyGalsworthy, John
General
The Complete Essays of John Galsworthy
Galsworthy, John
Essays
Nor is it so easy to tell, of each, to which world he belongs, as it was
to place the lady, who held out her finger over that gorge called Grand
Canyon, and said:
“It doesn't look thirteen miles; but they measured it just there! Excuse
my pointing!”
1912.
WANTED-SCHOOLING
“Et nous jongleurs inutiles, frivoles joueurs de luth!”. . . Useless
jugglers, frivolous players on the lute! Must we so describe ourselves,
we, the producers, season by season, of so many hundreds of “remarkable”
works of fiction?—for though, when we take up the remarkable works
of our fellows, we “really cannot read them!” the Press and the
advertisements of our publishers tell us that they are “remarkable.”
A story goes that once in the twilight undergrowth of a forest of
nut-bearing trees a number of little purblind creatures wandered,
singing for nuts. On some of these purblind creatures the nuts fell
heavy and full, extremely indigestible, and were quickly swallowed; on
others they fell light, and contained nothing, because the kernel had
already been eaten up above, and these light and kernel-less nuts were
accompanied by sibilations or laughter. On others again no nuts at all,
empty or full, came down. But nuts or no nuts, full nuts or empty nuts,
the purblind creatures below went on wandering and singing. A traveller
one day stopped one of these creatures whose voice was peculiarly
disagreeable, and asked “Why do you sing like this? Is it for pleasure
that you do it, or for pain? What do you get out of it? Is it for the
sake of those up there? Is it for your own sake—for the sake of your
family—for whose sake? Do you think your songs worth listening to?
Answer!”
The creature scratched itself, and sang the louder.
“Ah! Cacoethes! I pity, but do not blame you,” said the traveller.
He left the creature, and presently came to another which sang a squeaky
treble song. It wandered round in a ring under a grove of stunted trees,
and the traveller noticed that it never went out of that grove.
“Is it really necessary,” he said, “for you to express yourself thus?”
And as he spoke showers of tiny hard nuts came down on the little
creature, who ate them greedily. The traveller opened one; it was
extremely small and tasted of dry rot.
“Why, at all events,” he said, “need you stay under these trees? the
nuts are not good here.”
But for answer the little creature ran round and round, and round and
round.
“I suppose,” said the traveller, “small bad nuts are better than no
bread; if you went out of this grove you would starve?”
The purblind little creature shrieked. The traveller took the sound
for affirmation, and passed on. He came to a third little creature who,
under a tall tree, was singing very loudly indeed, while all around
was a great silence, broken only by sounds like the snuffling of small
noses. The creature stopped singing as the traveller came up, and at
once a storm of huge nuts came down; the traveller found them sweetish
and very oily.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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