Ten Years on the Road in the Blue Truck

Today is the tenth anniversary of my little blog, strange to say.  Where does the time go?  I started it on a whim, and have continued it ever since on the same principle.  Consequently, it has never amounted to much - a poor thing, Sir, but mine own - nevertheless, it has been for the most part a happy little hobby, an agreeable routine to pass the time with amid the changing seasons of life.

Your Head Trucker doesn't amount to much, either - just an old dog lying on the porch, watching the mad world go by.  If any of my 3,690 posts has uplifted my truckbuddies, shown you something you didn't know, or raised a smile on your face sometime or other - then my small efforts have not been entirely in vain.

To mark the occasion, I am serving up once again one of my favorite slices of literature for your diversion:  an excerpt from E. M. Forster's collection of essays, Two Cheers for Democracy (1951), which I posted ten years ago today.  The waiters will be handing out glasses of champagne while you read - no tipping and no pinching!  Enjoy.

I believe in aristocracy. . . — if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.

I give no examples — it is risky to do that — but the reader may as well consider whether this is the type of person he would like to meet and to be, and whether (going further with me) he would prefer that this type should not be an ascetic one. I am against asceticism myself. I am with the old Scotsman who wanted less chastity and more delicacy. I do not feel that my aristocrats are a real aristocracy if they thwart their bodies, since bodies are the instruments through which we register and enjoy the world. Still, I do not insist. This is not a major point. It is clearly possible to be sensitive, considerate and plucky and yet be an ascetic too, and if anyone possesses the first three qualities I will let him in!

On they go — an invincible army, yet not a victorious one. The aristocrats, the elect, the chosen, the Best People — all the words that describe them are false, and all attempts to organize them fail. Again and again Authority, seeing their value, has tried to net them and to utilize them as the Egyptian Priesthood or the Christian Church or the Chinese Civil Service or the Group Movement, or some other worthy stunt. But they slip through the net and are gone; when the door is shut, they are no longer in the room; their temple, as one of them remarked, is the holiness of the Heart’s affections, and their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide-open world.

Grateful thanks to all my truckbuddies for riding along with me in the Blue Truck.