MAN’S FAREWELL

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 July 1927, Page 2

MAN’S FAREWELL

FIRST SEA VOYAGE AT 82. A Londoner, Mr David Henry, at the age of eighty-two, made his first sea voyage recently in the Canard liner Tuscania, to join his two sons in Canada. His wife died a year ago and he found a lonely life in London unbearable. “London can be a terribly lonely place,” Mr Henry said, “even if you have lived there all your life. Besides, I want to work again. 1 was a cabinetmaker, and began work when I was a boy of ten. I had kept a number of my cabinets about the house, and when I came to sell my home before I left London, 1 was told some of them were quite valuable. They are nearly as old as I am, and are, therefore, antiques. It was sad selling up the old home, and at the sale I could not help bursting into tears. “My boys are my only comfort in life now, and I have not seen them for fifteen years. I shall never come back to England. Last time I went I went on a ship Lei. .IdaaorCASfotsl/ on a ship was in a tiny little yacht between Southampton and the Isle of Wight during a holiday by the seaside in 1873.” The gong sounded, and Mr Henry’s nephew, who had gone to see him off, had to leave for shore. The old man, a lonely, bent-up little figure, leaned over the side of the ship and waved a last farewell to. his nephew, and then, as the ship was passing out of sight, he blew an elaborate kiss in the direction of the New Forest.