WHERE IS GRANNIE?

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 1 May 1922, Page 5

WHERE IS GRANNIE?

JOINED THE DODO AND THE MOA.

THE TYRANNY OF YOUTH

(Auckland Star.) LOST—A dear old lady dressed in black silk, with a white lace cap; she wears a long gold chain round her neck, also mittens, and tells stories, ending, "Yes, my dear, things were very, very different when 1 was a girl." Last seen somewhere about 1880. Anyone knowing of her whereabouts will kindly communicate with "Anxious," Anyold Street, Anyold Town. There is no doubt Grannie has been missing for a very long time, and that i is a pity, as she was the one .British I institution we could least afford to lose. Gran'fer isn't as plentiful as he used to be, but he is made of sterner stuff, and we may yet hope to see him for some time dotting the landscape- with his lonely old figure. And where has Grandmother gone? It is all very well for the comic papers to taunt her with aping her granddaughter whose dresses, as a Frenchman wittily said, "begin too late and end too early," and it is all very well to accuse her with refusing to grow old "gracefully' 1 as the pcet has it.

The joke about not b€ing jable to tell from a back view which is Grannie, which is mother, and which is the flapper is partly true. There is quite a lot of truth in the statement that many grannies try hard to keep young. Some of them even go to thev length (or perhaps one should say the shortness) of the modern style of dress, which is charming on anything up to nineteen or so, but rather trying when seen on a parent, and utterly ghastly when worn by grannie. The expanse of gooseflesh she has to bare is wicked. And the ankles ghe has to expose under the thin veneer of silk stockings suggest the supports of the dining-room table rather than the delicate pieces of turnery which are the prop of the faseinat. ing ballet.

One could go on interminab.ly multiplying the indiscretions of Grannie in her attempt to keep up with the times, or rather to ignore time altogether, and if one were to ask her to name the" most wonderful and benefieient thing that could, happen she would say without hesitation the discovery of the elixir of youth, which the philosophers of the Middle Ages used to hunt alternately with a certain stone which now bears their name. One might even go so far as to say that Grannie, as the embodiment of all that the affectionate old word means, is as extinct as the moa.

But there is another side to the picture, and in this it is the younger generation which must bear the odium. It is all very well to laugh at Grannie's pathetic attempts to dodge Old Father Time's whitening hand, but why does she do it? Her almost moa-like disappearance from the face of New Zealand is not to be accounted for by any joke about her strenuous attempt to look

younger than she 'is —an innocent foible by the way, which finds an echo ■in every man as well as woman when he or she has reached the top of the hill "and is looking down the valley. It is really the Younger Set which has driven Grannie away from home, and if it had its own way it would send Grander after her. Stated briefly, Grannie's disappearance is due to no- 1 thing more or less than the fact that we ane dropping back into the ways of the savage. An Amateur Philosopher who was consulted by a reporter tnrows the whole blame on the younger people, and his sympathy is with Grannie all tie time, and with all those who have passed the attractive age. He says we colonials have, not a scrap of reverence for age or intiquity. We are brutally savage in our outlook, and when he sees how we treat our old and aging people, especially the women, he trembles for our future. It pained him to have to say it, but it was necessary to go to Germany to see how old folks should "be treated. Also in England and ! France the young people had more idea of the fitness of things than iftas to be found in the colonies.: Here" in New , Zealand the attitude to age reminded him of that of some savage tribes, who knocked -their pld folk on the head once : they had got past the working age, or ; else left them to shift for themselves, ; or die—snst as they.chose. The Amateur Philosopher said it was a terrible trait in a national character, and unless we realised the appalling state of soil! evidenced by our cruelty to the old we along with Australia would never achieve true greatness. Here, said he, it was considered something to be ashamed of, to grow old. Young people ignored with a superb selfishness all the sacrifices that had been made for them by their parents, and although every child was not openly cruel, there was always a lurking contempt for any woman who had passed the age when she was either useful or good to look upon. Briefly put, he says it is our paganism which has driven Grannie from her place. It is the age of youth, and the I glorification of the flapper. This is pleasant for the flapper, while it lasts, but youth should remember that Father Time is waiting, and in a few more i years will be looking at life with I Grannie's eyes instead of their own i( bright orbs, and then they will realise the cold brutality of selfish untra'm- ; melled youth. There is no doubt we I have pushed Grannie from her rightful i place by the fireside, and until she i comes back there cannot possibly be any luck about the house.