SWEEPING THE STREETS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15169, 7 December 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

SWEEPING THE STREETS.

j BT E.G.O, It is time for work. Work? Huh! They call it that. A great many people, hate their work, but I like when it is work. But the hours I have to spend _ w oTk? Not work, no. I—l cannot give it a name. lam one of those who [ ij/rflepf.the streets of \ Auckland 1 at : night. b„ Of .course. it's all -nay • own,fault, ; and if I hadn't been a fool I would have had a professiona career, perhaps. But I have had to pay tho , penalty for—well, never mind. It's my business, and as a man sows so he must reap. Yes; I was at Oxford. How did you know, stranger? Lord, how it will all out! It seems only a few hours ago since I was aa young as you, with a, straight eye, and a straight back. They called me the "General" at college. That was before I went to London and "saw life." I saw it alright, and that's why I'm here, in clothes such as these. Can you imagine that once I was But to hear it wouldn't do you any good. A million have done . worse than I; . and millions hava done better. It's time for work- Let's go out; I'm coming as far m the corner. » .'~ All the same, it's a big contrast, and I laugh at it sometimes. Life is all a joke; a grim joke for some who cannot bear the knocks. There may be tragedies-r-tra-gedies to the mind, body, ,and heart; there may be sentiment of the first grain; but it's all a joke. I've seen it all. I've have a mother's devotion; I've had rice in my hair and have been hit in the neck with old .shoes; I've had children clinging on my neck. And now, I help - to sweep the etreets at night. I clean up the filth that the people le'ave. I sweep up tho dust and debris of the day. Is there a bigger joke than that? Supposing you had to . brush over the footprints of men worth thousands, men who have walked happily along the street thinking business, every minute of their time meaning money. I think often that some of these men have done worse things than I; perhaps they do worse things and think worse things even as they walk along tho street. And I've got to sweep away the dust -that their well-shod feet have helped to.etir up. There's irony for you—the most bitter irony— You might think I'm an anarchist. You have been thinking, perhaps, that I look upon these wealthier people with the bitter hatred that goads men to crime; but you are wrong. I envy them, of course, and tho envy is sometlmos bitter. But I'm glad that I've enough* of the right stuff in me to envy. I have not yet sunk as low as some, with whom envy is past; who haven't tho desire, having fallen, to rise again. That is why you've got to laugh at life at the time you feel most liko crying. One slip, and you're down. If you don't get up at onco and laugh, another false step, perhaps a little sin, will take your feet from under you again before you've stiffened your back That's why it's best to bear it all and grin. Don't get down and stop down crying. If you do the world will trample on you. and you will stay down unnoticed and uncared. I often think as I sweep of the little leefc that patter over these stones— shod, with their warmly-clad little forms I think of what I might have done if things had been different. But the last bad winter, and the struggle, and the wife and kiddies going—it sucked the very life a blood from me. Still you've cot to laugh, if you can. If you grumble, you are despised. If you laugh, the world laughs with you. ... Happy? Oh, yes; as far as this sort of thing lets me be. It's filthy Vork but there i a a certain retrieve about it that helns me out. Another few months and I will be through with it. I must be coin* now. It is time forfor work. ° j

The walking stick of General Booth US f- ( r i , o V he last walk he-ever took, has a little history of its own. At a meeting in Pans some time ago a notorious Russian anarchist was converted by the Geneeloquence, and soon after the latter s return, to England he received from his convert a piece of string, with tho request that a knot might be tied in it to show the length of the walking .stick the General usually carried. .The string was knotted accordingly and .returned to Paris, and a little later this stick arrived in London, a, present from the grateful convert and the work,of his own .hands;, _