HER SECRET JOY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23381, 24 June 1939, Page 2 (Supplement)

HER SECRET JOY

A Poor Widow's Bundle of Letter!

A POOR widow living a dull and colourless life in an Old People's Home —"on the shelf" for good and all—that iis how some people might describe little Mrs. Kun, of Cluj, Transylvania, if they only saw her from a distance, not knowing with what happy, shining eyes she looks down from her shelf and how full and rich a life she is living by proxy since her son Steve has grown to man's estate. It seems no longer ago tlian yesterday that he was a red-cheeked, sturdy little boy running happily about his father's farm. That was before he was run over by a carthorse and had his right hand crushed so that it had to be amputated. That terrible affair was only the beginning of their troubles, for not lone afterwards Father Kun got into financial difficulties and was forced to sell the farm. The little family of three moved to Cluj and lived for years in penury and the irksome distress of country folk cooped up between brick walls. Mr. and Mrs. Kun went out to work, and Steve was apprenticed to a grocer. Ho was a good and diligent apprentice.

but "sugar and spice and all things nice" did not absorb all liis tlioug s. While his dexterous left hand maflfl packages of tea and rice, his -ey scanned the faces of the customers _ _ served, so as to reproduce them pencil or pen in his sketch-book evening. . ■ He never expected anything to come of those sketches; but one d;ay guardian angel of budding W? stepped in, as he so often does, ana P his sketch-book into the hands of, o versed in art, who was sufficiently * pressed by it to pull string after fitri - until he had got the boy transfer from the grocer's shop to an art scuo in Budapest. Tied With Ribbon Soon after this Mr. Kun died, ssi Mrs. Kun, too frail now for the TOUd work which was all that she could • found refuge in an almshouse, might have pitied herseit had it n been for Steve. Far from her as hej in hod v. he keeps hor company day a _ night.* It is the closest, sweetest communion, made easy by- his weekly 1 tors, which tell her every snialles tail of his life —except the fact the stamps they bear have been bouEi" out of the price of his supper. _ Arranged in neat piles and tied lilac ribbon, these letters, sO .. .' j„ filial love and .anxious sohcitw-' illumine her little cell-like room for and give joy to her lonely life- . Words cannot say how proud , 6 .. of this gifted boy of hers who in midst of the temptations of a great ci. has remained so good a son. Sho ho is going to he a great painter; a it seems as if her faith were goins be justified, for he has just awarded, at the age of 21, a gold fflP" for one of his pictures and a ota scholarship for a year in "Rome.