How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.

About Idlers As in the case of the “go-getter” who concentrates on the work sector to the exclusion of everything in life, the rich idler (who is differentiated from the tramp only in the fact that his early environment makes social adjust¬ ment and sexual opportunities almost a matter of course) is eventually faced with an insoluble problem. There are men and women who work hard all their lives for the pure purpose of escaping work in the twilight of their existences. These, and others who have never worked at all, gravitate to certain paradisiac spots where human irresponsibility is not too much frowned upon. We find them lolling about on the Riviera ; wre find them at Cairo* and Capri, on the boulevards of Paris, and in the night clubs of London—chasing pleasure and a new thrill in the latest, most fantastic, and bizarre fashion. Social custom makes it far more difficult for men to follow this technique than for women, and therefore we find that among women who have been brought up to believe that a woman’s chief work in life is to be pretty, this is one of the commonest techniques. Women who have followed the strategy of “ no work and all play ” cut a sorry figure when they approach the age of fifty. We find them, often bejewelled and beautifully gowned, running around from one gigolo to the other, one watering place to the next, from one charlatan to the next. If it were not for the fact that good human material, degenerated through lack of exercise, both mental and physical, is so tragic a sight, the spectacle of well- educated but non-working women sighing fatuously over the hocus-pocus of some religious or metaphysical cult, would be comic. All too frequently the comedy ends in the tragedy of melancholia and suicide. The tragedy is all the more appalling because the amount of socially useful work that can be done by women of this type for those who suffer under the heel of economic oppression, physical handicaps, or mal-educa- tion, is beyond all comprehension. We have seen women sitting at the gaming tables in Monte Carlo throwing