“REALISM DOWN TO EARTH”

BISHOP BRUCE BAXTER used to tell the story of a man who had a precocious son who wanted a horse for Christ-’ mas more than he wanted anything else. The father tried to talk him out of it, telling him that they couldn’t keep a horse in the city. “But I want a horse, and I don’t want anything but a horse 1” whined the three-year-old.

Endeavors to compromise with the child for the much j desired horse, the father found, were of no avail. He got a i picture of a horse in colors and brought that home. The little fellow said: “That isn’t a real horse, daddy!” And when his father brought home a cardboard horse, as large as the boy himself, once again he heard: “But that isn’t a real horse, daddy.

I want a real horse!” There was a plaintive note in his voice. The father bought a book showing pictures of horses, every type of horse from a pony to a race horse, beautiful steeds, Kentucky thoroughbreds, with jockeys on them, horses out in the pasture, and sleek steeds in races. But the boy was adamant: “I want a horse that’s made out of horse!”

The little boy did not want a substitute for a “horse that’s made out of horse.” He wanted realism. In these hectic days everyone seems to offer substitutes; there is a lack of realism in preaching, politics, and other fields. A generation ago Carl Sandburg wrote a poem en¬ titled “To a Contemporary Bunkshooter,” which was; directed at Billy Sunday.

If Sandburg wrote his poem today; he could dedicate it to many people. As we listen to these; “bunkshooters” we control our almost irresistible urge to annihiliate them. These tear-jerkers, calamity howlers, dis¬ aster exaggerators are always in a dither, in a state of great i excitement about nothing much. 142 In our everyday American way of living we need “a horse that’s made out of horse.”

We want honest-to-goodness realism in our writing, thinking, and feeling. We’re weary of the “bunkshooters.”