THE OLD AND FRIENDLESS.

New Zealand Mail, 21 February 1901, Page 61

THE OLD AND FRIENDLESS.

In keeping with their determination to draft aged recipients of charity, who ‘are without friends or relations, into the quartet's offered to such helpless folk at the Ohiro Home, the Benevolent Trustees on the 12th instant examined several olcl men and worn ear to whom their intentions had been communicated. Almost without exception the offer was received with outspoken disfavour. There seemed to exist the strongest sentimental objection in almost all cases to becoming an inmate of the Home. With some this objection appeared to be insuperable ; others yielded with tearful reluctance '‘that it might be for the best.” One woman jauntily declined, saying, with a sniff, “I can get help elsewhere, thank you, gentlemen. Goodday.” A fine grey-haired old dame pretested that it would kill her to go into the Home, although her own clergyman wrote saying that she ought to go somewhere where! she could get proper nursing and attention. She begged to be allowed to enter the Home for the Aged Needy, and one of the trustees told her that if she filled in an application he would see what could be done. All the old people were given till the end of the month to consider the matter. One ease which appeared to be of the saddest character was that of a carefully-groomed! gentlemanly-looking man. He had been in receipt of a small money dole for years, and the intimation that he would have to make the Ohiro Refuge his home from the end of the month seemed to come upon him like a bolt from the blue. Hd protested weakly against what he called the injustice of it, and left the room with tears in his eyes. From a knowledge! of the Home, which occupies a splendid position on the heights overlooking the city on the ■south-west, one cannot help feeling, despite a strong sympathy with their reluctance, that that admirably equipped and managed establishment is the proper place for these friendletss and bereft ones. Within its walls they will receive attention as well as warmth and good food, besides careful nursing when sick. In tie meantime th,esr friends could not be better employed than in endeavouring to overcome the prejudices of these poor old people, every one of whom is well deserving of a peaceful end.