The Age of Thrills

　　This is, above all other ages, the age of thrills. The Romans, no doubt, had their Colosseum, but I doubt if even the Romans expected to be thrilled so continuously as we do nowadays. They had not cinemas running all day long in all parts of the city, or publishing-houses pouring out "Tarzans" and "Sheiks" by the hundred thousand. they know nothing of those excitements of speed which you can get nowadays from a race on a motor-omnibus. They did not possess a single aero-plane, and so were never able to sit with their hearts in their mouths watching "stunts" in the air. They seem to have had very little choice between reading Virgil and Caesar and other authors of famous schoolbooks, and going to see the gladiators. No schoolboy, however humane, will be surprised to learn that most of them preferred to go and see the gladiators.

　　I doubt, however, if we are any happier as a result of the multiplication of thrills in our daily lives. Few of our happiest memories are memories of sensations. Everybody who saw the first Zeppelin brought down over London in flames seemed very happy the next day: they had had the experience of having seen something unique, and for the moment they were able to flatter thelves on their superiority to those of their fellow-creatures who had missed the sensational spectacle. But who now feels happier in his memory for having enjoyed the horror and the triumph of that thrill? I saw only two Zepplins brought down in flames, but to remember them gives me no happiness that I would not gladly part with for a Jubilee sixpence. I prefer infinitely to remember lying on my back on a grassgrown railway bridge on an Easter Monday, in the sun more than ten years before and eating two sorts of sandwiches wrapped in a newspaper. I do not remember the flavor of the sandwiches, but I remember the cousin who was with me and the sunshine and the grass and the feeling that I couldn't have been happier if I had been in Heaven. Looking backward, we are happier ause we have liked somebody or something than ause we have participated in the thrill of some at public event.

　　Thrills, indeed, are merely an amusement, and their effect vanishes as quickly as the effect of a game of cards. Those who enjoy life most enjoy thrills least. Or it might be nearer the truth to say that they are least dependant on thrills for their happiness. The autobiography of the happiest man would not be record of sensational experiences. Charles Lamb's tenderest essay was called "Old China", not "Murderers I Have Met". Think yourself back into happiness and it is ten to one you will find yourself in a sunny garden and not at some exciting public show. The first time you heard a willow-wren's song and saw it lifting it beak to sing in the shadow of the sycamore leaves seems an infinitely more wonderful thing to look back on than a riot in the streets with bayonets drawn and policemen charging and broken-skulled civilians borne off to the hospital.

　　Nor are the best books the most thrilling books. Guy Boothby was a more thrilling author than Jane Austen, yet who troubles even to remember any of Guy Boothby's novels today? at literature has its exaltations, but a thrill is merely a superficial excitement of the nerves, and moves the imagination or the affections about as little or as much as a strong cup of coffee.

　　I confess to an occasional----may, frequent----craving for coffee and to an occasional----may, frequent----craving for thrills, but, as fro happiness, I should prefer to grow broad beans and lettuces in a walled garden and to sit in a deck-chair in my shirtsleeves, watching their brief lives till they were ready for the table.