home > books by FWB > 1917 The Other Side of The Hill > Swings and Round-Abouts

PART I

SWINGS AND ROUND-ABOUTS

It was Regatta Day. There are few things in this old world more fascinating than a crowd on pleasure bent. On my left was the river — a glittering expanse of blue water alive with craft of every size and kind. To my right, as far as eye could see, the green hills of the great domain were smothered by one vast, surging concourse of holiday-spirited humanity. Everybody was moving, and the effect was kaleidoscopic. The white blouses and waving gossamers of the women alternated with the more sombre appearance of the men. Hither and thither, children with gay ribbons and bright sashes danced and romped. In and out, like the flashing threads on the restless loom, the colours wove themselves into ever-changing patterns. The motley throng was broken up here and there by the tents and the booths, the Aunt Sallys and the side-shows.

The seven wonders of the world were here! There could be no mistake about that. Brazen-throated showmen shouted it in a perfect frenzy of enthusiasm to the indifferent passer-by; and, if any sceptics still doubted, the gaudy canvases which furnished the most realistic presentments of the prodigies to be seen within should have sufficed to brush away all such base suspicions. And here, too, were the swings and round-abouts! Oh, those swings and round-abouts! Will there ever appear upon this planet a sour-visaged generation for whom the swings and round-abouts will have no charm? As I caught the sounds of the wondrous organ, to the magic strains of which the wooden horses prance, I thought of Mr. Patrick R. Chalmers. It is one of life’s great refreshments to have met Mr. Chalmers’s cheery showman, with his merry eye and sunburnt face, his hungry lurcher and his brindled terrier pup, his painted caravan, and, above all, his swings and round-abouts, jogging down the dusty old English lane.

“Goo’-day said ’e; ‘goo-day,’ said I; ’an’ ’ow d’you find things go,
An’ what’s the chance o’ millions when you runs a travellin’ show?’
‘I find,’ said ’e, ‘things very much as ’ow I’ve always found.
For mostly they goes up and down, or else goes round and round.’
Said ’e, ‘The job’s the very spit o’ what it always were;
It’s bread and bacon mostly when the dog don’t catch a hare;
But lookin’ at it broad, an’ while it ain’t no merchant king’s. What’s lost upon the round-abouts we pulls up on the swings.’ ”

This, according to Mr. Chalmers, was the genial showman’s philosophy. After the conversation in the lane, the caravan moved on once more.

” ’E thumped upon the footboard, an’ ’e lumbered on again.
To meet a gold-dust sunset, down the owl-light in the lane ;
For ‘up and down an’ round,’ says *e, ‘goes all appointed things.
An’ losses on the round-abouts means profits on the swings!'”

Now this is worth thinking about. The showman’s philosophy must be taken to pieces, carefully analysed and considered bit by bit. If it means anything, it means that there are two distinct styles on which life may be lived. There is the style represented by the swings, and there is the style represented by the round-abouts. Some lives are all ups and downs, like the experience of the people on the swings. Others, again, are all round and round, like the experience of the people on the round-abouts. Or, perhaps, I shall get nearer to the heart of things if I say that life has to be lived sometimes on the principle of the swings and sometimes on the principle of the round-abouts. “Sometimes things goes up and down and sometimes round and round.”

As I sit here to-day, I look back on two separate years in my life’s little story. The one was positively crowded with eventfulness. Some of the greatest triumphs and the most crushing disappointments of my life came to me in that year. In that year I tasted some of my sweetest joys and my bitterest sorrows. Everything was sensational. It was all ups and downs. It was a year on the swings. The other year was lived on an exactly opposite principle. From January to December nothing happened. I slept every night, for the whole three hundred and sixty-five nights, in the same bed. I preached every Sunday for fifty-two Sundays in the same pulpit. I saw each day the same faces. I went each day the same accustomed round. There came to me that year no very great elation nor any overwhelming grief. I was perfectly happy — as happy as the laughing children on the revolving wooden horses. But it was distinctly a year on the round-abouts. I suppose that we all have times when life treats us like the swings, and times when it behaves itself towards us just like the round-abouts.

The only thing to do is to set the one over against the other. If you are tired of the round-abouts, remember the fun that you had on the swings, and think of the enjoyment that they will again afford you. Or if, on the other hand, your brain sickens with the violent movement of the swings, remember the pleasure that was yours on the round-abouts, and make up your mind that that satisfaction will soon be yours again. Most people, I fancy, prefer the swings. The showman in the lane hinted as much when he twice referred to the losses on the round-abouts and the profits on the swings. Obviously,
the swings are the more popular. We love the thrill. You hold your breath as you soar skyward and the earth flies from you; your heart seems to rush to your mouth as you swoop towards the ground once more. You sail gloriously forwards through the rushing air ; and the next moment you fall hopelessly backwards through a vacuum in space. It is a series of intoxicating sensations. Nobody who remembers the delirious joy of that sort of thing will wonder that the showman found that the swings
paid him best. But it would never have done, merely on that account, to have travelled with swings only. People get tired of swings. They long for a change, and, longing for a change, they welcome the round-abouts. Life must be taken as a whole. It consists of swings and round-abouts. It is futile to cavil at the one and glorify the other.

“For up an’ down, an’ round an’ round, goes all appointed things.
An’ losses on the round-abouts means profit on the swings.”

That is the point. The swings and the round-abouts make up the one show. They are the separate parts of a complete whole. It is a waste of time to consider the one except in relation to the other. The swings belong to the round-abouts; and the round-abouts belong to the swings.

Life is full of just such supplementary things. We are too fond of putting the swings in a class by themselves, and the round-abouts in a class by themselves, as though we were dividing the sheep from the goats. Then, having separated them, we proceed to compare them. We contrast the up-and-down movement of the swings with the round-and-round movement of the round-abouts. We magnify the pleasures of the one to the disparagement of the other, until there comes lumbering down the lane a rumbling old caravan, driven by a wise but swarthy philosopher who assures us that it would never, never do to travel the country either with swings alone or with round-abouts alone. You must have both swings and round-abouts. A fine instance of this sort of thing occurred in the middle of the eighteenth century. We were at the crisis of our fate. Great Britain was at war on three continents. In Europe, in India, and in America things were going heavily against us. Disaster abroad led to confusion at home. Riots broke out everywhere, and the nation was for a moment entirely
out of control. For eleven weeks England was without a responsible Ministry. And why? It was all a matter of round-abouts versus swings.

One crowd cried, “Let Pitt be Minister!”
The other crowd cried, “Let Newcastle be Minister.”
All England asked, “Shall it be Pitt or Newcastle?”
And then some genius inquired, “Why not Pitt
and Newcastle?”

Exactly! Why ask whether it shall be swings or round-abouts? Why not swings and round-abouts? So England called Pitt and Newcastle together to save the nation. “And thus it was found,” as Macaulay says, “that these two men, so unlike in character, so lately mortal enemies, were necessary to each other. Newcastle had fallen in November for want of that public confidence which Pitt possessed and of that parliamentary support which Pitt was better qualified than any man of his time to give. Pitt had fallen in April, for want of that species of influence which Newcastle had passed his whole life in acquiring and hoarding. Neither of them had power enough to support himself. Each of them had power enough to overturn the other. Their union would be irresistible.” They united; and the combination proved the salvation of the country. It is so silly to be always setting the swings against the round-abouts and the round-abouts against the swings. The showman in the lane found that, by combining swings and round-abouts, he could make a decent living.

For that is the beauty of it all. People talk glibly of the law of compensation. Emerson has an essay on the subject; Paley has a lecture; and Miss Havergal has a poem. It is all very good so far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. If I lose a sovereign on Monday and find a sovereign on Tuesday, I am compensated, it is true; but I am no better off. I cannot live on the gains made in the course of that profitless transaction. The showman in the lane was, Mr. Chalmers says, “‘si cheery cove and sunburnt,” and with good reason. For there was something more than the law of compensation at work in his behalf. The profits on the swings not only compensated for the losses on the round-abouts, but the profits on the swings and the round-abouts as a whole gave him a clear surplus on which he could live without anxiety. The whole thing was a success, and it kept him smiling. That, I say, is the beauty of it. When I am able to strike life’s balance-sheet; when I am able to reckon up all the losses I have sustained by going round-and-round, and the gains I have accumulated by all my ups-and-downs, I shall discover that the entire business has resulted in a profit far beyond my dreams. I may sometimes have to run my round-abouts at a loss in order to attract patrons to my swings ; such a proceeding is quite common in every line of business. But, depend upon it, when I at last take my swings and my round-abouts as a whole, and make up the grand account, I shall find that I have not merely been compensated for my losses, but enriched beyond all thought. The showman who handles his swings and his round-abouts at all wisely will find the buttercups, the bluebells, and the hawthorn in the lane looking lovelier every time he drives the caravan along it; and each time he comes his face will have a cheerier smile and his soul will be singing a sweeter song.