PRESENTATIONS.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3597, 1 April 1924, Page 2

PRESENTATIONS.

Yesterday afternoon the staff of Messrs. Abraham and Williams, Ltd., met together for the purpose of making presentations to two members of the staff on their leaving the Company. Mr R. S. Abraham, chairman, of the board, eulogised the good work of Miss M, Randell over a period of seven years, and presented her With a three-piece silver tea service and , tray. Messrs. P. Larcomb and R. . P. Abraham also spoke appreciatively , of Miss Randell’s excellent services. Miss Randell suitably replied. Travel- . ling rug was preesnted to Mr J. Kj Dick by Mr Larcomb on behalf of the staff and Messrs. Kerslake and Moffatt added their tribute to his good qualities. Mr Dick thanked the ( staff for their present. TOILING CHINESE. i THE FARMER AND HIS HUMOUR. (By Harold Speakmain, in tho ‘Christian Science Monitor.’) The landscape painter sat watching ’riksha men fit by the window of the hotel. During the afternoon I had seen the paintings he had brought back to Shanghai of the Chinese countryside—small, lovely canals half-disclosed in spraying bamboo, little farms with straw roofs and weather-stained walls hiding among quaint groups of banyan and cedar “outdoor women” with unbound feet i carrying huge baskets on their heads, and red sun coming up over the waving rice. Then,as I sat beside him watching a crowd of coolies who stood and squatted in the rain beyond the hotel verandah, apparently oblivious to any discomfort, the landscape painter began to speak. "What gets mo,” he said, “is their amazing fortitude. The Chinese, I mean. Day after day, while I-was living out there among them the i rice no matter what impossible time I rose in the morning, I was always wakened by the song of the workers from the fields. Day after day, as I painted I watched them busying themselves at tasks under the strain of which a Western ‘man with hoe’ wouldn’t have lasted a week.” THE CHINESE FARMER’S DAT. “The Chinese farmer begins his work before dawn, and keeps at it till after sundown —a matter of twelve or fifteen hours a day—and his day runs seven days a week. My Chinese servant, Ah Chow, told me that he thonght the farmer rested on the Chinese New Tear’s Day, but he wasn’t perfectly sure of that! He did know, however, that other national holidays, such as Dragon Boat Day, on June 21, which even foreign banks in Shanghai observe, mean nothing lir the life of the farmer. “He not only works continuously in the mud which covers his fields, but his family works as well, the whole lot of them. Those who are too young to wade about in the mud arc given the task of watching the b'ind- ; folded water buffalo, who, attached to large - sprocketed, horizontal , wheels, go round and round on tho banks of the canals raising water to the higher level by means of an endless chain of wooden scoops. When the farmer is too poor to have a water buffalo, two,four, six, or even eight human beings of both sexes, with their arms resting on horizontal bamboo pole, work a treadmill of broad pegs on a revolving shaft which turns tho wooden chain of scoops and raises the water.. • “The women, of course, work in the field's with the men, performing severe and continual labour. I very soon saw, however, that the men invariably did the heaviest work. At j first I was prepared to sctimcntalise a little over that, but gradually a better reason than sentiment became apparent. It was simply that each individual was appointed to a task commensurate with his own strength. There was something mighty square about that. . . "Just what sort of work did they | they do?” I inquired of the landscape painter. SOW AND REAP SIDE BY SIDE. “Rice,” ho said. “And tho most peculiar part about, rico is that all the various operations take place in the fields at tho same time. While tho farmers in one field are squidging through a foot of soft muck with a wooden plough and a warm buffalo, others in the next field will be threshing with flails, or winnowing with largo fans, or draining off the water, or weeding, or harrowing, or reaping. It Is like a factory making at one tirqe a variety of ’parts.’ That is all possible because of an extremely clover system of irrigation which allows one field to bo flooded without flooding tho others. A matter of infinite judgment and care. "When the shoots aro pullod from

their original bed by hand and tied into small bundles, they are placed at regular intervals in the larger fields where they are to be replanted. Then the farmers, bent double and moving backward, taks two or three planes between the first and second fingers of the right hand and thrust them into the water-covered mud. They lay the plants so accurately that the rows are not only traceable ‘up and down and across,’ but at an angle of 45dcg, as well. That’s the way they work —hour after hour, bent over double. Those nearest the place where I was painting would make funny little songs about me—usually improper, I judged, from Ah Chow’s expression—and all in the country dialect, of which I understand nothing. Then, with legs and arms deep in the mud they would look up at me and grin merrily.”

A CHINESE JOKE. The landscape painter's eyes twinkled. "But once I fooled ’em! Once I actually understood a joke in Chinese myself. That, of course, was just a matter of luck. The words spoken were extremely simple., and were carefully pronounced in the Shanghai dialect, of which I understood a little. “Two of the grown sons of a farmer at whose I.ut I was staying were at work on the treadmill of a waterwheel. It was a large waterwheel, and should have been propelled by six people instead of two. The day was terribly hot, and the two men, though stripped to the waist, were working like truck horses, and perspiring at every pore. Sweat dropped from their brows and noses and ran in rivulets down the depressions of their muscular backs. They were panting; their tongues were fairly hanging out. “ They know that I spoke a few words of the Shanghai dialect, and as I cartie past with Ah Chow on my way sketching one of them said very clearly fo his brother: “Gong Din, I congratulate you.” “ ‘Ha my Amusing Cucumber,’ exclaimed the other, “what for?” , “ ‘Because you are clever, so clever! Yes, certainly. But why?’

“ ‘Because you gobble up your three meals a day, and never do a stroke of work!’ “I turned and looked at Ah Chow,” went on the landscape painter. “His friendly Chinese face was working as though he were about to explode. ‘You understan’?’ he asked. “Suddenly all of ns burst into laughter. The treadmill stopped, because it treaders wore doubled up in terrific mirt’\ Ah Chow in his emotion dropped the sketching umbrella in the mud of the rice field. I put down the easel I was carrying and stood trying to hold my sides together. Can you imagine understanding a joke in Chinese? Here were these yellow men laughing at themselves and at me and at the treadmill with a beautiful sense of humour,and there was I laughing at them and at myself because I understood it, and there was old Ah Chow laughing so hard that he dropped tile sketching umbrella in the mnd. At last Ah Chow managed to gasp: ’Chiny fella velly funny. He donna care if e work! He make plenty joke aT the time!’ And that started us all off again.” Tho landscape painter set chuckling for a while, and ’ooking with friendly eyes at the ’riksha coolies. “That’s all there was to it,” he said, “except a remark that Ah Chow made afterwards. ‘Pusa,’ he said, ‘laughter is good for the belly of man!’ And by the gods, he was right!”