GOOD FAIRY "The Old Folks' Daughter"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23339, 6 May 1939, Page 9 (Supplement)

GOOD FAIRY "The Old Folks' Daughter"

N OT , all the pretty romances get "into tho films, the plays, and the books. Here is one which reaches its climax a dozen years from its beginning. During all that time a gentle-hearted woman, discharging the anxious but humdrum duties of a post office clerk in a London suburb, has been a ministering angel to a little community. Having lost lier parents, she adopted 16 old folks who live in a famous colony of almshouses near her place of business. Slio made them her special care, looked after their old age pensions, and visited them after oflico hours and on holiday afternoons, taking them sweets, flowers and papers. She wroto letters for those disabled; she read to them, talked to and comforted them, told them of the local weddings and christenings, hoard their lifestories, their little tales of grievance and vexation, # as well as the simple

talcs of their occasional pleasures and excitements. So for all these years ]6 very old people had a watchful, loving, unofficial daughter. They were not nhvays the same 16, for Time marches with relentless pace among the aged, and new faces appeared in tho familiar scenes, but each newcomer was adopted in turn.

Now a change has come; the good record of the Old Folk's Daughter has earned her promotion, she must leave tho district to take up duty elsevvhere.

The announcement left the old folks almost inconsolable, but after the first shock had a little abated they held a meeting, drafted a letter of loving gratitude, and bore it in triumph to the. post oflico as an accompaniment to a little music-case.

There have been tears on both sides, but smiles will return, for, come what may, tho Old Folk's Daughter will cOntiniio her visits to tho almshouses; she has still her half-days and Sundays for her old friends, she says.