DO QUARRELS "ENDEAR?"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20668, 13 September 1930, Page 6 (Supplement)

DO QUARRELS " ENDEAR?"

We have inherited some very fine things from the Victorian era, remarks a-writer, hut there is ono thing I would like to see blotted out, and is a line or two from a Tennyson poem, which has crept into the national consciousness:—

Blessings on the falling out that all tho more endears, When we fall out with those we love, and kiss again frith tears.

Again and again it crops up —" quarrels clear the air," " quarrels get things off your chest." Thunderstorms clear tho >iir, no doubt, but have you been in a garden after a thunderstorm, and seen a tree with its limbs gashed off, birds lying drowned that *an hour ago were carolling their hearts out in joy, and flowers dashed into the mud 1 That's what quarrels do in a homo. The kissing again with tears may be a pleasant process by comparison with the quarrel, but there is always a feeling of humiliation and a feeling of remorse which leavo scars behind them. Nobody can be dignified in a quarrel, and it is a perilous thing to give someone you love a memory of your face distorted by anger, your voice sharpened by a sneer, your tongue bitter with cruelty you shudder at when you remember it afterwards.

When poople quarrel they lash themselves to lengths they would nover have dreamed possible, and later, iu tho night, perhaps, they remember these cruel thing?, even though they have forgiven them. Most of us to-day talk loudly about international peace. Tho spirit that makes a row in a home is exactly the same spirit that smashes lands and peoples with its wroth. What. is the use of talking about world peace, if you have not peace and self-control in your. own heart and homo? ' ,•