OUR ECHOES

THE PROGRAMME

There are people who cannot be happy without a programme. At the theatre, they take no pleasure in the play if they are not previously exactly informed of the names of the actors and the content of each act and each scene. At the concert or at the Opera, music is of no interest to them until they know the words of the airs they hear, information that they cannot obtain from the singers. Very few artists take the trouble to make their listeners understand, in intelligible language, what is going on.

They cannot travel abroad in comfort if they do not succeed in making their impressions agree exactly with the printed explanations.

A friend of mine wanted to visit Paris in three days. He madly crisscrossed the city in all directions, his nose in his Baedecker. He struggled with the map and barely raised his eyes to see the Eiffel Tower. He was so eager to identify minutely what he saw, that he saw nothing at all.

I am inclined myself to be programmatic (it is doubtless a neologism, but I like the word), the danger is in the exaggeration of this tendency. That is to say, we can be so zealous in seeking what is supposed to please us, that we find nothing that pleases us.

There are people who are unhappy if their days are not clearly catalogued. They cannot enjoy without reserve a beautiful sunrise until they know whether it is indeed the 15th of May. They suffer from not knowing what they will do next year on this date, and unless the program for Saturday is mapped out, they cannot, on Tuesday, be happy without ulterior motives.

That is an extreme. Here is the other: there are those who set sail every day toward the unknown, like Christopher Columbus on his caravel, for whom tomorrow is a perpetual novelty and life an uncharted world; who are prepared for nothing and who are ready to meet anything: the Indies or America, spices or gold, pirates or a shipwreck, anything, provided it is not in the program, provided it is new, strange and singular.

As in all things, wisdom consists in choosing one's course between these two extremes. We must have enough of a program to know where our next meal will come from, but not so much as to take away our appetite for all our meals.

In short, it is good to apply to the program, to the plan, to the budget, to the system, the words of the oracle of Delphi: "Nothing in excess."

FRANK CRANE.