The poor often much happier than the rich
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Miles Davin is currently recuperating from an illness. In the absence of a current column, the Messenger is reprinting a favorite column of Miles’ that was previously published. The entire Messenger staff wishes Miles a speedy recovery.) Mrs. Kathleen Norris, author of “Mother,” “The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne” and “Saturday’s Child,” says that too many writers have been telling us about the sorrows of the poor, though ignorant of the fact that the poor family is often healthier and happier in every way than the rich family.
“We need our writers,” says Mrs. Norris, “to be aware of the pleasures to be derived from a good dinner of corned beef and cabbage, and a visit to a motion picture theater”. Often when I pass a row of mean houses, as they’ve been called, I’ve been grateful of the good times I’ve had in just such places.
Who is there who has come up from childhood, and comparative poverty, who doesn’t have the same memories of the joys of those days? The simplest feasts are always the best in holidays that come but seldom are far more prized than that seemingly happier state when every day is a holiday that brings a feast.
Mrs. Norris speaks of her appreciation for Dickens because he understood so well the joys of the poor. Their life was not one long story of despair, but he gave them a roast goose and plum pudding for Christmas Dinner. He gave them faith and hope and love. If more of our modern novelists would write of the joy of the poor man’s household, there would be less of the spirit of discontent in the minds of the people and an unreasonable envy for those who happen to have more of this world’s goods, and there would be more of the real spirits and the holiday feasts.
Look around your hometown, and unless you have the finest home there, there are times when you have visions and hopes to obtain one just as classy or better.
It used to be, in the olden days, that you had to come from a rich family if you wanted to go on to college to continue your education. If you are rich or poor, and in college, look around you now and you will see rich, poor, and in-betweens surrounding you.
So if you pass me on the highway in your fancy automobile, don’t look down your nose at me, I could very well be a lot happier than you are.