Flights of Fancy

Whenever I saw the builders raising a house on a plot of land adjoining a cemetery that stands in the middle of the city, I would ask myself: can the owner really hope to find tenants who fancy being neighbors to the dead??

The building rose and stood finished, elegant and trim with its green windows. I passed it after a while and found washing hung out on the roofs of the fourth floor, so I cursed the housing crisis and pitied the tenants greatly, supposing that they had sentenced themselves to keeping shut the windows overlooking the cemetery, so that the sight of funerals would not wound their spirits, so that they would not be forced to think of the inevitable fate at every moment of the day, and so that shapes of ghosts would not rise before them whenever night fell...

I passed the building some time later and found some of its tenants sitting on the balcony — with people who looked like guests — sipping coffee at their leisure, and looking down — from on high — over the graves and headstones standing in the city of the dead...

I swallowed hard and realized at last that I am far too extravagant in my estimate of the delicacy of people's feelings...

The administration of one of the American schools in this country wished to teach its girl students a practical lesson in the exercise of the rights of citizenship, so it asked them to take part in electing a students' council to assist the teaching staff in some of its duties.

The school prepared the ballot boxes and permitted every means of campaigning, from posters on the walls to the girls' rallying cries to fads and novelties.

The battle began, and the girls' enthusiasm was extreme.

No sooner was the result announced — and it favored a certain candidate backed by a powerful bloc — than the air rang with the crackle of firecrackers the students set off in celebration.

And the school administration was taken by surprise — it had forgotten that in Suwayda there are (women electors...) who learn the fads of elections... before they grasp their essence...

I read a news item at which I paused a long while.

(Some of our most estimable ladies have called on the official and civic bodies to join in organizing a week for combating cursing and insults.)

And I wondered how the authors of the proposal envision carrying out the week. By radio? By advertising? By preaching in the houses of God? By pursuing the cursing public with long sermons on cleanliness of the tongue?

I cannot get ahead of events and prophesy the results... but I incline against optimism.

Cleanliness or filthiness of tongue cannot be separated from a general moral question. The person accustomed to the clean word in every circle cannot be foul-tongued even in the fiercest fit of temper.

And the person to whose tongue insults spring at a rate of dozens a minute cannot be deterred, or made to remember the rules of etiquette, merely by hearing the voice of the announcer (for instance) repeating in his ear for a whole week:

(Dear citizen, cursing is a crime against morals, unworthy of those who commit it...)

Nor do I at all rule out that direct preaching may set the listener's nerves on edge, so that the result comes out the other way round, and the announcer and her father get from his tongue what neither she nor the organizers of the week would like.

The remedy in every question — and in this question in particular — is a radical remedy: so begin at the roots, and do not spend effort and time on outward shows that lead nowhere.

And on the occasion of the ("cursing week") I offer the following tale:

A few days ago I was riding the tram, and opposite me sat a man who caught my eye: gray in his hair, a rosary in his hand, and murmurings his lips never ceased repeating the whole way, without his glancing right or left.

His whispering lips never once stopped until the tram reached one of the stops and some of those getting off pushed to clear themselves a way — and one of them, in the crush of the hideous jam, stepped on our friend's foot.

Only then did his murmurings break off — for his voice to peal out in curses that made the very beads of the rosary blush red.

What, I wonder, can our ladies do with a specimen like this — and thousands of others like him??