CITY AND COUNTRY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 136, 11 June 1929, Page 11

CITY AND COUNTRY.

A CONTRAST IN CHILDREN. SUNDAY NIGHT OBSERVATIONS (By W.K.H) Sunday night was not particularly a very mild one, but I have never seen so many barefooted children at any religious service as I saw at the Methodist Central Mission at the Strand Theatre. My work in connection with the relief of distress has led me to see many things which should hardly ever be seen in a young country not yet a century old. with its many possibilities and its meagre population of a million and a-half, and yet as I sat in my seat and saw so many boys with no boots on and not too many clothes either, for some of them wore summer jackets, flocking to the front seats which were reserved for them, I wondered what the future held in store for boys who started life under such adverse conditions. I asked one of the ushers if the boys belonged to the Sunday School of the mission. He replied that very few of them did. He did not know where they came from except that they had come to the theatre to join in the singing and to see the pictures which were shown at the close of the sermon. One incident clearly showed to my mind what kind of homes some of them had. The preacher was at the height of his eloquence and was driving home with some force the crux of his message and asked: ''Why do you people come here? Is it because you are fed up at home and have nowhere else to go?" "Yes!" came a shrill voice from a barefooted youngster in one of the front seats, and in the roar of laughter which followed, there came a chorus of voices from the audience: "That's the truth, anyway." Only on Friday last, fifty or sixty miles north of Auckland, it was a privilege a few of us had to see the boys and girls of that part coming out of school and mounting four, five and even six on one horse, canter along the country roads to their homes, the picture of ruddy, robust health, ready for the full appetising meal which would be ready prepared for them. One could imagine that with the short darkening days of winter these children would all be in bed between, seven and eight o'clock, after they had been thoroughly warmed at a big wood fire.. No wonder one of our party remarked that it was from the country that the leaders in the citv eventuallv came.

What struck me particularly was the keen anxious look on the faces of the youngsters in the theatre, and how the little chaps with no father or .mother with them, or any guardian to look after them, jostled with bigger boys for a good place in the seats. I asked the usher again if the parents ever put in an appearance with their offspring. He replied that he could not understand it, but such was hardly,ever the cas-e. One fat old lady who sat beside me overheard my query to the usher, and chipped in: " The parents have enough of the kids all the week; surSly you do not expect them to look after them on Sunday, too!" I asked what was the difference. She assumed a knowing air, simply laughed at what appeared to her my ignorance, and snapped out: "It's easily seen, mistier, that you have no kids of your own or you would know more then!" Then to completely flatten me out, she continued by saying: "What would do for young people in my day would not do nowadays, when kids had to have their freedom." "Freedom," I said, "that's not the right kind of freedom." "'Ah. well," was her final rejoinder, "there is no freedom nowadays, for between kids and faddists who worry the life out of us. there is not much freedom."

I left the meeting still contrasting the drawbacks of city life for poor children with the better life of the country children whose mode of living came much nearer to my ideal of what ought to be.