AMONG THE ORPHANS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 301, 20 December 1926, Page 8

AMONG THE ORPHANS.

JOY OF CHILD HEARTS. GIFTS GALORE. VISIT OF FATHER C__RrSTMASThere is only one unalloyed happiness; j it dwells in the heart of a child. The emotions of the adult are dulled in the medley of life, but those of the child are springs from the pure wells of nature. In all the world there is nothing more tonic *****t- the laughter of happy youth; and those who succeed in stirring the strings of this ecstatic sound are rewarded by a responsive thriU whose soul value none may compute. And it was in the thrills evoked by rhilritsh glee that the members of the party representing the Auckland Shop Assistants' Union found a compensating delight on Saturday, when they visited the orphanages at Manurewa and Papatoetoe to distribute toys to the young people who had no parents to lavish upon them the intimate affections which (_b__stmas time expands to a bursting generosity. A happy day it was to these little people when came rolling through the gates of their isolation a number of motor cars, packed with grown-ups whose one idea it was to flood them with the sunshine of their gaiety. The cars ran in with bursts of music, the blare of trumpets, the piping of whistles and the screech of ""buzzers;" from them leapt a scarlet and white Father Christmas, bearded and venerable, with his crimson and white clad lady in attendance, and, following them, a dozen gorgeously attired individuals with white collars and black faces, clattering bones and soundin-- tambourines —and a weird golliwog creature, with wildly rolling eyes, casting phosphorescent glances round about. Truly a terrible looking creature, but not sufficiently so to daunt the hearts of the elder boys, who tackled him in a "jiff," sending him rolling over and over, to the wild delight of the younger children. Such laughter there was, unrestrained and joyous! How* eager the smiles of expectation as the venerable white beard of Santa Claus sweeps along the rows of children sitting in the sunlight on the weU kept lawns! How radiantly flash those smiles as the gifts, varying with the age of the child, are placed into outstretched, hands! With what glad exclamations, the presentations over, do the delighted recipients display their "rifts one to the other — nursing their dolls with the ostentation of proud mothers, showing their books as if they bore therein aU the knowledge of the world, swinging bats and tennis racquets in the mode of champions, blowing upon trumpets and beating drams in a perfect transport. i A Riot of Laughter. The germs of gladness swarm in chll- j dreh's laughter. Inside the orphanage march the merry minstrels from Milne and Choyce, followed by the dancing chil-1 dren —just, one imagines, as the children : of long ago followed the Pied Piper. The children crowd the little hail and_ make the rafters ring with the echoes of their glee as Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambourine crack their age-old jokes and sing their "comics, 1 * and" they vociferously acclaim the coloured gentlemen who open wide enormous red lips to swell the chorus.; There is nothing backward among these children; they have a quick wit and a ready perception, and it need be subtle humour indeed that passes their notice unchallenged by a yeU of mirth. Caught > in the contagion, the grown-ttps laughed i with ihe children where, among themselves, they might have stood unmoved; the remnants of lost youth, hidden somewhere in the deep recesses of their memories, stole out to sparkle anew and : riot for the nonce in this atmosphere of juvenility. At such a time cares are for- ■ <*t>tten, and all seems well with the world, so that what has been done for the 1 orphans has by the orphans been amply . repaid-