The Simple Life

The Simple Life, by Charles
Wagner

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Simple Life, by Charles Wagner
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Simple Life
Author: Charles Wagner
Translator: Mary Louise Hendee
Release Date: October 20, 2007 [EBook #23092]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
SIMPLE LIFE ***

Produced by Chris Curnow, Sarah Jensen, Matt Mello and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

THE SIMPLE LIFE

By CHARLES WAGNER Author of The Better Way
Translated from the French by Mary Louise Hendee
GROSSET & DUNLAP Publishers, New York
Copyright, 1901, by McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.

CONTENTS
Page
I. OUR COMPLEX LIFE 1
II. THE ESSENCE OF SIMPLICITY 15
III. SIMPLICITY OF THOUGHT 22
IV. SIMPLICITY OF SPEECH 39
V. SIMPLE DUTY 52
VI. SIMPLE NEEDS 68
VII. SIMPLE PLEASURES 80
VIII. THE MERCENARY SPIRIT AND SIMPLICITY 96
IX. NOTORIETY AND THE INGLORIOUS GOOD 111
X. THE WORLD AND THE LIFE OF THE HOME 128
XI. SIMPLE BEAUTY 139
XII. PRIDE AND SIMPLICITY IN THE INTERCOURSE OF MEN
151
XIII. THE EDUCATION FOR SIMPLICITY 167

XIV. CONCLUSION 188

THE SIMPLE LIFE
I
OUR COMPLEX LIFE
At the home of the Blanchards, everything is topsy-turvy, and with
reason. Think of it! Mlle. Yvonne is to be married Tuesday, and to-day
is Friday!
Callers loaded with gifts, and tradesmen bending under packages, come
and go in endless procession. The servants are at the end of their
endurance. As for the family and the betrothed, they no longer have a
life or a fixed abode. Their mornings are spent with dressmakers,
milliners, upholsterers, jewelers, decorators, and caterers. After that,
comes a rush through offices, where one waits in line, gazing vaguely
at busy clerks engulfed in papers. A fortunate thing, if there be time
when this is over, to run home and dress for the series of ceremonial
dinners--betrothal dinners, dinners of presentation, the settlement
dinner, receptions, balls. About midnight, home again, harassed and
weary, to find the latest accumulation of parcels, and a deluge of
letters--congratulations, felicitations, acceptances and regrets from
bridesmaids and ushers, excuses of tardy tradesmen. And the
contretemps of the last minute--a sudden death that disarranges the
bridal party; a wretched cold that prevents a favorite cantatrice from
singing, and so forth, and so forth. Those poor Blanchards! They will
never be ready, and they thought they had foreseen everything!
Such has been their existence for a month. No longer possible to
breathe, to rest a half-hour, to tranquillize one's thoughts. No, this is not
living!
Mercifully, there is Grandmother's room. Grandmother is verging on
eighty. Through many toils and much suffering, she has come to meet
things with the calm assurance which life brings to men and women of

high thinking and large hearts. She sits there in her arm-chair, enjoying
the silence of long meditative hours. So the flood of affairs surging
through the house, ebbs at her door. At the threshold of this retreat,
voices are hushed and footfalls softened; and when the young fiancés
want to hide away for a moment, they flee to Grandmother.
"Poor children!" is her greeting. "You are worn out! Rest a little and
belong to each other. All these things count for nothing. Don't let them
absorb you, it isn't worth while."
They know it well, these two young people. How many times in the last
weeks has their love had to make way for all sorts of conventions and
futilities! Fate, at this decisive moment of their lives, seems bent upon
drawing their minds away from the one thing essential, to harry them
with a host of trivialities; and heartily do they approve the opinion of
Grandmamma when she says, between a smile and a caress:
"Decidedly, my dears, the world is growing too complex; and it does
not make people happier--quite the contrary!"
* * * * *
I also, am of Grandmamma's opinion. From the cradle to the grave, in
his needs as in his pleasures, in his conception of the world and of
himself, the man of modern times struggles through a maze of endless
complication. Nothing is simple any longer: neither thought nor action;
not pleasure, not even dying. With our own hands we have added to
existence a train of hardships, and lopped off many a gratification. I
believe that thousands of our fellow-men, suffering the consequences
of a too artificial life, will be grateful if we try to give expression to
their discontent, and to justify the regret for naturalness which vaguely
oppresses