THE TRIPLETS

Evening Star, Issue 19020, 15 August 1925, Page 13

THE TRIPLETS

AM ALLEGORY FROM LIFE [Written by A Mrs Crusoe, for the ‘ Evening Star.’] No. 5. ! It makes P. sad to hear people quote that hateful proverb, “ When poverty conies in at the door love flies out at the window,” As P. says, "All the more need for love to stay when I knock at the door. Love brightens up the poorest home so, and love and I could bo such friends.” She says people themselves pitch love ouj; of windows, and would have done it if she had not entered thoir doors. I think P. is quite right. She is quite right about many things. She ought to be. She lived long years in the home that the Founder of Christianity had with His Mother. Love never flew out of thoir Home, but stayed with P. in it, and both were happier than in any home since Love made its very darkest corners bright and shining. P. is very sensitive over the way sho is shunned and ‘‘sent to Coventry.” People shut her out of their lives and shut their eyes tight to the fact that she is in the lives and houses of their neighbors. " I know I am not very attractive,” she says, “but people do rub it in so. Of course, I don’t expect them to know me when I am in my rag dresses and all untidy, and look as if I hadn’t had a bath for months, but I go about in other dresses, and they still cut mo. People arc so queer, too, for they arc always so pleased to see mo when 1 wear the dresses out of what I call ‘ the Debt Collection.’ I mean the beautiful dresses people got ‘on credit.' Very often the drosses are still l on credit ’ when I add them to my Rag Collection, but as long as they are good people love to see me in them.” And P. sighs heavily as if she found the world a bewildering affair. Then it is my turn to put my arms round her and say “Never mind, P.; you stay with me; we can be happy together. I’ll mend up some of your Rag dresses and put them on, and you and I will go out and have such fun. People will think I am wearing some of the Debt Collection, and greet us so pleasantly. And Love won’t fly out of our window. Come up my bill and see the sunset and bo happy remembering how in Galilee yon used to sit on a hill with a Mother and Son and watch the sunsets.” And when wo coma down the hill there are no more tears in P.’s eyes, but a soft glow of memories, and wo come in-doors and have merry and exciting talks about some of her next contrivances for making us happy and comfortable. Or sho tells me talcs of her long, life, bo absorbing that midnight is upon us ere we arc aware. She is a woman of world-wide experience ; in all times and centuries has she lived. Up into the Arctic, in the hot deserts, in tropic lands, on the high seas —wherever mankind has been there baa P. travelled. In kindness to me there are many terrible tales she never tells mo. If 1 ask for them she says: “No, they are too sad to tell,” and falls into silence, and the look on her face makes me fee! very small indeed; but I love to sit and watch it, and feel a better woman for doing it. Merry are her tales very often; sho has a wonderful sense of humor and a marvellous fund of happy stories to draw from. Truly sho is “ the best company in the world,” and those who shun her in their own and other’s lives little dream of what they miss. May the Lord ' reward her for all her dear ways with me! CHAPTER V.—WORK. " Work and contentment go hand in hand.” A home does seem more content with a man in it—even an old man like Work. He never looks old, and the energy in his glance would put to shame many a young and vigorous man. I hope W. will not leave mo when I am sixty; that is supposed to be the age in this country when you “ retire from work,” unless you are a bishop or a politician. If P. is with ma then, W. will not leave, I know, and this is a comfort to think of. Of my three companions, ho is the only ono to whom I have given a nickname. I call him “ the tryant." I fight him ranch, for if I did not he would take possession of my life, and P. and B. would be nowhere. “ ffo like a man,” a friend of mine would say. filie told me with scorn one day that W. is a woman; “it is women who do the work of tho world.” But W. is a man in my house, and I don't have to marry him, and yet no one says it is “improper” for me to have him here. So I am quite happy, and_ if ever he turns himself into a woman out he goes as having come in under false pretences. __ There is little need to praiso W. Everyone knows how admirable be is, bow strong and sturdy, how successful in life, how money-getting (except to women), how the King has him in Ids household. Are wo not often told “ tho King is tho hardest worker in tho Empire”? I can well believe it.

_W. haa whole proverbs in praise of him, and a whole long and awful hymn about him, which begins : "Work, for the night is coming.” How many times have I sung it when “ dead tired,” and wished it would dawn on choosers of hymns that it is a morning hymn, and never, never should be sung at night, when the church is full of tired women. Oh! yes; W. is honored and revered by all, especially in “our colonial dominions.” 1 quite share in the genera] extolling of him, but as a woman I think my own thoughts about him, too, and fight _ him much, which he enjoys. He says it is quite refreshing to coino across a woman who is not a doormat for him to tread on. All the same, he approves 100 much, and I tell him so, of what men call “ domestic life ” for women (they really mean domestic work). Ho is too afraid that women with leisure wiU get into mischief even if Satan is at the oilier end of the earth, W. approves most highly of church work for women to fill up any chinks of timo unoccupied by the domestic variety. 1 wonder he stays with me. Little domestic work is mine, and (apparently) less church work. But W. knows I do a good deal of the more subtle kind of church work, of which the clergy seldom approve. But someone has got to do it. “Glory and honor have I none, but such ae I can I give thee, ray dear mother-church ” (another misquotation). So I seldom praise W, to his face. It is better, for the sake of women, to toll him to go to Jericho till he has learnt not to make women’s backs ache, their tempers short, and nervous breakdowns their often inevitable lot in hfo. I tell him he is responsible for some of the “ unhappiness of married life ” (of wheih we hear too much, because we nowadays lack so much the virtues of reserve and loyalty). I tell him women have no timo ip which to bring up their children, no time in which to be their companions. I pour what he calls a “ verbal shower bath " over him, and then, when I think be is properly subdued, tell him to come along and do some work for once. Just like a woman!

At times W. tells me of his grievances, especially of how tho world will regard him as a wooden-head," who has only hands to work with. He waxes quite hot about it. “The working man!" he cries in scorn, “who is the working man? A man.who works with any part of him? Brains work. I tell you, brains work,” and W. thumps the table hard. " I tell you the man who works with hie brain works more than the man who nses his hands,” and he tells me of a delicate machine ‘‘ my e<?n, Invention," made. It registers the effect of mental work and of manual work on the heart, and it reveals the fact that brain work has more effect

on the heart than manual work has. “But the fools won’t believe it,’’ be says bitterly, “ it will be ages before the world will believe it,” lie speaks much and bitterly, too, about those who shirk work and those who do bad work. If they could only hear his whiplash words and voice about them!

W. and I have many memories of old times together. We can sit together in the twilight by the fire and talk over old times. “Do you remember, W., when all tho children had measles, and I had to nurse them and do everything?” “Do you remember how I got unfit for teaching because of long strain, and how 'my hands set to work instead, and I became one of many * working women ’?” “Do you remember how you helped me to bear trouble and sorrow and anguish and suspense, and nearly despair? I never could have got through it all without you!” And \V. puts his hand on mine, and says gravely: ‘‘Yes; we have been good pals, you and I, haven’t we? And you have been never a shirker,” which is high praise from W. His highest prase_ is for those of whom Kipling wrote in his 1 L’envoi,’ who work “ for the joy of tho working;.” That is a man-like thing. It is gnod~ for the world that women mostly work for the joy of doing for those they love. Long may it bo so! I fear I am'not a “new woman.” I fear I am not up to date. I fear I am no younrrer than my age. But I am far from being in despair at “ what the world is coming to,” for, as long as my three friends— L. 8., P., and W.—live and move round in this world, they will keep this world fresh and sweet and sane and wholesome and lovable. And hear an it seif is going to contain W. (as I tell him wliei bo is low-spirited), for it is said : “ His servants shall serve Him.” So if T don’t go to heaven W. will, and 1 hope I shall be glad to see him go in even if I am left out. Never shall we be fit for heaven, I am sure, till wo feel more glad at the entrance into it of those wo love than of our own. Service-work—tho law of tho universe. What a ring of pride sounded in the voice of Christ when ho eaid : “My Father works!” Work really is of celestial origin. born ages before the race of men. At times W. talk’s much to me of all his ex-neriences. and of the wouderfu 1 things his son, Invention, has dona. He is a cheerful soul, I need a cheerful man about the place, especially on winhr nights; he keeps the bogies away from rny mind by setting mo to do simple helpful things. “Grinding work,” the "bitterness of poverty,” the “inferiority of tho lowly born.” We. in my little 18ft x 22ft home, never allow snob ex pressions to be used Inside it. No! to have had all the advantages I hat these bring to any human life is enough tr give a Mrs Crusoe a “ swelled head.” even at her mature ago. When she is gone may these three friends of hers find mamanother Mrs Crusoe to live with, and may each of them like this one be—- “ Laeta sorte mea.”