THE HAPPINESS TIME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 17, 21 January 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE HAPPINESS TIME.

(By Batbia H. R. Luttrcll, Waimana, Bay of Plenty. Age IG.) There is nothing so pleasant just now as these warm evenings of summer, when the day first begins to pall, and the pale veil of a dusky twilight enshrouds the valleys and hills. There is such happiness about just then; it is in the last few notes of music from a homing lark and blown abroad on every small breath of wind.

It was just such an evening as this that I decided to stroll out among it all —the shadows, the beauty and the sound.

I felt like Chicken -h icken exactly, though of course nothing had fallen upon my bead, which isn't bald anyway, and I was looking for a road that led to pleasant things rather than one which would lead me to the king. But tho first thing I met was a rooster, and he said all he knew how to say:."Cock-a-doodle-doo!" and sounded so happy aboutsit. I passed on.

The next thing I met was a frog. Now a frog, no matter what sort of a din he may make in spring time, is i particularly out of season in summer, so I just crouched down and watched. He said, with a low, a deep, and a high note, "Caw, croak, cro-ak!" which is, after all, all a frog can say, and then he flopped back into his weedy water hole -with a splash that sounded happy enough.

Next I met Poppy. Poppy is a cow—a very ordinary sort of cow—but when she saw me she gave vent to a deep-throated bellow that very nearly caused me to turn a somersault backwards. Still, Poppy was happy too, elso she wouldn't have done it.

I was just longing to see the foal. It saw me first, and set off at a frightened gallop across the paddock, whinneying as it went. Of course, that was all a foal could do, and of course the little thing was happy. It wasn't Chieken-hicken's king, but the foal I had set out to see, so there was nothing to do hut turn back and wander home across the fields, which the first earliest moonbeams had already begun to stitch with silver. And as I wandered on I thought of those lew quaint animal friends I had met. Each one had said all it knew how to say, and said it happily. Whether they meant, "How do you do," "Good day," or "Fair you well," no one could ever say, hut everyone knows their contented happiness. It seems to me this happiness time you keep with you from day to day, ever the same, might be a fitting time for what is left of that old, old, New Year song. As in the words of the ageold philosopher, Omar Khayyam, "Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die." And to me it seems a sound idea. What uo yen say, Budgeiitcs?