THE ISLAND MOTHERS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 237, 30 June 1908, Page 5

THE ISLAND MOTHERS.

All the Empire sympathises with the sorrows of the English mother'in India, who has to send her children away from her almost in their infancy, and )vlio is separated from' them through all their days of childhood. Tho mothers of these Islands have trials nearly as great to meet. .They may keep their children with them in their first years, but as soon as they come to manhood off they must go to find an opening, and a career. New South Wales mourns over its unwieldy capital which absorbs all tho vitality of the State, and the more thoughtful peoplo .envy us our four cities scattered through the Dominion, each serving a wide country district, but no one of them large enough to drain the district of its strength. And for many reasons wo may bo glad that .wo have these several towns instead of one as large as' Sydney, but it must bo acknowledged that they do help tho families to separate. Dick is sent to the Auckland office of his bank, and the insurance company sends Fred to its Dunedin branch, and if they come home for Christmas, the little mother thinks herself happy. Indeed, she may think herself happy if they remain in the Dominion instead of going farther afield in search of adventures: and fortune.

The distances in Nsw : Zealand are tremendous, considering the actual size of the Islands, and people must consider themselves next door neighbours- if their towns, are only a day's journey apart. _ Perhaps this prepares them for the further journeys they take, and the fact that Sydney is practically as near to Wellington as Auckland is to Invercargill makes it easier for tho roving advonturer to follow his star to Australia. Every mail day sees the departure of mother's sons, and, indeed, of mother's daughters, for whom the Dominion seems too small,' and its offers of -fortune too infrequent. We 1 are so used to this now, and, because we all have in our veins the blood of men and women who crossed a world_ in search of a ; now home' and now opportunities, we sympathise and understand so clearly this desire for change and venture, that we hardly realiso how rapidly home-loving ideals are departing from our midst. Indeed, wo, nearlyall of us want to travel; we may love our. homes, but not in the old-fashioned way, and we love the' wide world more.

Somo of those who go, do so reluctantly, willing to seo the world, but not happy in being permanently exiled from their homes, as they must be when they tako some situation abroad, and others forget in the excitement of departure for a now. life, all tho dear homo ties that they are leaving behind. Those who are left know only the loneliness arid tho' regret that fortuno has made this parting inevitable, and the mothers feel it most. "Was it for this that I brought tip my children," says tho Island mother bitterly, as she watches tho departing steamer bearing her kins away from her, "and was it for this that a mother was made, that she should sit at home in loneliness, while her children aro forced to wander to the farthest ends of tho earth?" After all, say what wo will, the one supromo luxury of life is sympathetic companionship. Of this tho vital quality is perfect understanding. It is tho quality the Italians oxquisitely express as-that of being " simpatica." It cannot bo defined or acquired, because it is a temperamental relation. It is, or it is not, and its origin is prior to all our questioning. Among its attributes are similarity of experiences.—Lilian Whitney.

THOSE WRETCHED EPIGRAWS! It is only a little over two centuries since somebody wrote:— "How wisely. Nature, ordering all below, Forbade a beard on woman's chin to grow! For -how could she be shaved, 'whafo'or the skill, Whoso tongue would'never let her chin be still?" How wo have advanced! No man dares suggest now that women talk much or foolishly. Woman has como into her realm, and' enjovs the proper privileges of her state. She drinks pure tea—Suratura "D," 2s. No queen eve.r drank better J r