VALIANT SICK.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 293, 4 September 1908, Page 6

VALIANT SICK.

HUMOUR OUT OF DARKNESS. A DESERVING CAUSE. Girls are playing hockey on the Basill Reserve, boys burst out of school like colts let loose, men and women pass with springing step—an unseen gallery of the aged and stricken watches. In a poor old Home in ' Buckle Street, that looks decrepit as its inmates, a dozeii women, bent and feeble, view the young world from a balcony. Trees hide them from the street; the life beneath knows nothing of the one old woman rubs her glasses. " I mind the games wo played when I was young—but not so hoydenish as that. Ah, well!" "UNCONQUERABLE SOULS." From their bedroom windows, old men also watch, Old.A's heart is very weak; ho must not get excited at the goals. B is not ex. cited, though his gaze is fixed. Ho is looking into Stygian darkness, but if his sight is gone, his heart is strong, and he hates to own his bereavement. He walks downstairs with a jaunty flourish of his stick, his head thrown back; who says that he is blind? But every now and then ho feels the bannister. His was a foreknown fate. He has been slowly going blind for months. Now the affliction is complete, but in his pride ha almost hides it.

It must require a great heart and a deep religious faith to live a Sister's life in the Roman Catholic Home for the Aged and Incurable, in Buckle Street. The quiet Sisters pass like rays of light among the darkened lives that dwell there. No patients aro.received whose cases are not practically hopeless. When the hospital shuts its door to the incurable, the Church gives them its asylum. In the Buckle Street Home 40 persons havo died of cancer in seven years. Some of the cases were too dreadful to describe, yet the Sistors nursed and cheered them till the ■ last. , . i \ A BED-RIDDEN HUMOURIST. : The ancient, narrow wards are bright with., sun and flowers. Wonderful to relate, when the pressman visited the Home yesterday, he found tho patients also bright. A few, who wore paralysed and very old, had passed • beyond tho states of joy and sorrow. They . lived, and that was all. But the -cheerfulness of most of the old people, though soma of them are terribly afflicted, had a lesson for the world'of health. In an upstairs room a womaji lay who has been five years in bed. Opposite lay a poor old paralysed woman, her features all distorted. Harry Lauder, who earns a thousand pounds a week by singing coniio songs, does not eajn it like this first poor sufferer. She is the humourist aud radiant philosopher of the Home. "Do they treat you well here?" asked tho pressman. "Well now, I should be a very wicked woman if I told you anything else," was tho quick answer. "Yos, it's very seldom that I'm 'down,' and then for reasons of my own. I had my troubles when I was—outside. And here I couldn't shift my head for a long time, but now the head can shift about quite lively. . , . ! "No, I don't find the'days long or the nights. I read a little, but not much. I seo the Sister come and go about the ward, and I don't want any other company. And (with a burst of laughter) I have got sweetheart now."

Tliers is a- gentle rocking opposite. Tho palsied Woman,' who had seemed to be oblivious to all things, is seen to be convulsed with 1 laughter at this last remark. Although her laughter shakes the bed clothes, it is silent, and the distorted features hardly show it. "Isn't she a bard case?" asks the Sister of this paralytic. Tho bed rocks again. "Indeed I have,", asseverates tho bedridden one'. " And he's not one of your common people either. . He's a. Lutheran minister" (with a fine, .humourous mimicry of pride). a ■ , "His father was a Lutheran minister," corrects tho Sister. , "And so is he. ' Isn't ho going' to bo finished up himself?" The other sufferer laughs, just recognisably. "FEET DO WEAR OUTI" In another room an old man sits by the fire. His face is rosy and contented, but his feet! Each of them is swollen like a football. "Elephantiasis," says the Sister. "Feet do wear out too soon,'' protests tho invalid, as though bis were quite the common fato of men. Does he like being in tha Home? "Don't I just. How long have I been here, Sister?" She replies five years. Ho declares himself, and looks quite happy. There were palsied men,' their arms liko withered sticks. A boy crouched by the fire; a bird could not have stood upon thoso legs. Another palsied boy was in his bed; he will live there, for the most part. _ He too could see tho hockey girls, and ships coming up the harbour were a great sight. Altogether, there are 40 inmates in tho Home, and a new building is sorely needed, but that will not come' yet. In the companion institution at Island Bay are over 20 stricken boys and girls. In both Homes the Sisters snread the sunshine of tneir presence, and the name 'of Mother Mary Joseph' Aubert breathes as a benediction.

WHERE CLADNESS REICNS. Thero is one .portiou of the Home iu Buckle Street that sorrow does not touch. This is the creche, where working women leave their children in safe care through the day. Nine mites were playing yesterday, and there are more on washing-days. . Ono, an Assyrian, was born in Jerusalem, in the Holy Land. When their mothers bring them in the morning the little ones are bathed and put into creche clothes to play iu. They are fed with bread and milk, and in the evening bathed again, and put back in their proper clothes before the mothers'come. For all this attention a charge is made of threepence a day. The' babies are the only paying guests. _ At the back of the Home is a soup kitchen, which some 40 men and women visit every afternoon and evening for freo plates of soup. They are not undeserving beggars j there are people in Wellington so needy; care is taken against imposition. "Sometimes you would not know, from their dress, how poor they are," explains the Sister. "They tell ua whon they would not tell anyone else.''-A lifted slido revealed a young woman dressed in black, with a small family, waiting., The visitor, who was not a Roman Catholic, was deeply impressed by tho self-sacrificing work of these Sisters, which they can show, but do not speak about. On Monday night the annual conccrt to raise funds for Mother Mary Joseph Aubert's homes will bo held in the Town Hall. It is the best of causes.