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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 2 (June 1, 1932)

History and Histrionics

History and Histrionics.

Contemporary existence is a contagious disease, or a gold rush for wheel or woe. But has it not always been so? Perhaps the Present is no more perfidious than the Past. Our scuffle with the “ad valorem” is only a repetition of the ancient repertoire, and if history were free of histrionics it would prove that the dead past was not so dead. But history is only hearsay, and hearsay is the shadow-soaring of ghosts and, like the tales of “the men who go down to the spree in sips,” must be taken with a good deal of water. The past looks passable only because it is past; otherwise it has no visible means of disport, apart from the persistent prestidigitators of the Past who proclaim that nothing borne of man since the whiskers of Dundreary fell before the blade of Monsieur Gillette, can be worth the hoot of a boiled owl or the wheeze of a hoarse radish. But sufficient unto the dough is the weevil thereof, and let the dread past bury its dread. One day the present will be the past and the future will be the present, and:—

When we are gone sing no sad songs for us,

Our problems won't be worth a tinker's cuss

With those who go to make posterity, And pound Life's speedway with celerity. They'll merely shrug and go their divers ways,

Perchance remarking, “thems was good old days.”