TWO LOCAL PICTURES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 8883, 20 May 1892, Page 3

TWO LOCAL PICTURES.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—l., Faith working by love in aid of the blind; 11., Lying on beds of roses in Stickley's Eden of moral loveliness. By the law of heredity I was invested with a large legacy of nervousness, and, therefore, shrink naturally from a criticism of the second work of art; but inasmuch as doctor and inspector are my forerunners, and have shed unwelcome light on the dark and slippery path, I am now happy, there being no room even for the exercise of splendid audacity. All will admit that the adjective in the superlative, " most damnable," if not elegant in diction is certainly a good term to swear by. Look on this picture, then on that. Picture No. I.:—Dr. Macgregor has recently visited the Blind Institution, and expressed great gratification thereon, but what is still better, the Hon. A. J. ( adman has just completed his official investigation herein, and has made a minute in the visitors' book, which 1 quote verbatim el literatim. "My first visit loan Institute of the Blind ; am much pleased at what I have, seen." Carlyle never smote the nail of truth harder on the head than when he affirmed, "Not what I say, but what I do, is my kingdom.'" Thus Mr. Cadman graciously confirmed the truth of his testimony by donating a sum of £2 2s to the funds. Now, if this is not a pleasing picture of truth, fact, and generous action, I never saw one, and outside Heaven it would be difficult to find a masterpiece of rarer genius or more intrinsic excellence. Its motto, as above, is, " Faith working by love."

Picture No. 11.: —A few days ago Dr. Macgregor visited the house of one Stickley, a fanner of hoys and girls, taken under the wing of the Charitable Aid Board, on their famous and phenomenal " boardingout system." The scene was visited amid most favourable Mrs. Stickley was " cleaning up," never in God's great universe did light anil shade (the latter preponderating) assume such sublime and harmonious proportions. This picture has two sides, the physical and moral. The former mav be best sketched in the living words of the Dr. (preamble), " I found such a state of things in one of the houses I called at to-day, that I dare not hesitate to state officially, what I have already told you privately. At Stickley's house eight children are boarded, four paid for by the Charitable Aid Board. Ihe surroundings and interior of this house are squalid and dirty in the extreme, the normal state of the house being filthy beyond measure " Now, my friends let us enter the chamber of horrors. " I found my road only by persistence into a side room where two girls slept. The bed was unspeakably filthy, and bedding scanty, and so di' ty as to be unfit for a (log kennel, the mattresses being wet and rotten." Inspector Strathern, being charmed with the light of the picture, had never before detected the finish of its shading, said it was " simply damnable." With this exhaustive critique, hot from the lips of an able connoisseur, surely it is not necessary for me further hereon to dilate. I must now call attention to the moral side of this inimitable production The wretched girls became oracular, exclaiming, " We have a nice clean warm bed." Condemned by a great cloud of witnesses (which I now place in the box), pinched looks, the illegitimate offspring of inanition ; scant costume, cousinGerman to criminal economy ; squalid entourage, brother to last witness ; damp, rotten bedding, alias first fruits of boarding-out minus supervision; foetid bedroom by inaccessible out of lilthy dog-kennel, but nothing like as good. To this list must be added bitter experience, conscience monitions, and the red-hot. unimpeachable, and laconic evidence of doctor and inspector. In spite of such overwhelming testimony it is deplorable that these maltreated and affrighted children (with the view of " burking investigation") had been viciously trained to violate the queen of virtues in order to screen the guilt of the parties who had generated this " damnable " spectacle. If the chairman and members of the Charitable Aid Board had devoted a little more time to the cleansing of their Augean " boarding-out " stables, it would have been better alike for the funds and the credit of the institution, and these worthies would have had less time to devote to needless meddling with the incorporation of the Blind Institute.

Thanks to good management, sound discipline, and careful supervision, the Blind Institution has been saved from the opprobrium which, inter alia, constitutes some of those blushing honours now adorning the distinguished chairman and members of the Charitable Aid Board. Hood's immortal stanza sent a thrill to every heart in Christendom, but the " Song of the Shirt" was not more terrible than is his song of the dirt, linked to its frightful " boarding out" train of physical and moral leprosy.—l am, etc., John Abbott. llurstmere, May 19,1592.