RAGS

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1681, 18 May 1904, Page 81 (Supplement)

RAGS

Bags? •. / \ Faugh!:' . . • Who cares for rags? ’V U; No one but the rag merchant, say’st thou. And thou speaketh truly, friend, for those who have perforce to wear them would much prefer “purple and fine linen/' - ■ C* ; • ; The- rags of the beggar may be his . stock-in-trade, and he doubtless. finds them very useful withal; but I doubt not he would-much rather do his “fleechingi” if he could, in the, garb of the Scribes ; and -Pharisees—such being preferable to. crawling from door tq door in the evilsmelling habiliments of -Lazarus. 1 The clean-bodied and spotless-minded shudder at the sight of rags: and turn; away hastily,. but not to think of the genesis of 'the fags .they shrink from. Why should /they think of,such when they think of so /little?/'So.much depends-on the lack of ithought-iIQW-a-days that to be thoughtful /■is.'to court failure, contumely, and often /enough disaster, while attention to prinfeciple, ethics, and morality usually lands /the thinker high and dry in Queer street, i /his bones sore, his garments in rags, and j > his soul a soothing 1 cauldron, of hitter-, ; /ness---'/. . /V----f/ I once took to thinking of rags. And in a cathedral, top, where they were /carefully arranged overhead, projecting /from the capitals of clustered shafts that , /supported the great groined arches of the j sfrolof. They yrere veritable rags, thickly; lepated Avith- the ;dust of years. But were j /these fragments not gazed upon with j ' veneration > bye,;.the faultlessly-dressed j . worshippers , who lingered in the long-j i drawn aisle,;, pir by . the fretted Teredos ) These were the ragged .remnants of banI ners—rags stained with, the bipod of brave rnen -who stood' around those colours cle-. •fending-them to the .death. , ■- Those gaudy, dusty, bloody rags .raised before my mental eye the frozemtrenches /of Sebastopol, the gory plains of Inkeiv /man, and : the sanguinary heights of ’•Alma, the red Redan, and the death-trap flrfv'Baiaclava, 'The hot Winds of Southern tfudia seemed to. me to have' scorched ! giWr silken folds,until they were charred, band hard,’'and black. Maybe they bad /behn bedraggled on the. plains of Egypt, *toi ; rent : mid the deep forests of Abyssinia. P?herever they- may have been tattered they have ever been held in /br.ave hands and'guarded- by'stout hearts,

fired, mayhap,. into sheolic fierceness by lying tongues. Bravo hands and true, faithful hearts that must needs bleed to death upon the field or be cast away, to die anywhere, anywhere, no matter!

Yes, —I soliloquised as I gazed up at those remnants of devastating war—yes, and those veterans who fought under their silken flutter and lived to reach their native land again, have spent, or are spending their declining years in f rags _ no better than those they fought I for in those evil days before men began to -ask themselves for . what they were fighting, and for whom? They may have thought in a way they were fighting for rags, but they did not realise* the nature of these “clouts” that were to . make up the “looped and windowed raggedness” of their old age. They are | beginning to think now, and the rags that will in future go to furnish the roof of our cathedrals will, I hope, be soiled but by the' weather and the tooth of. j Time—not blackened by blood and battle-smoke nor torn, by the gentle dumdum. ;v .. . But why rags,' and such rags, in the Temple of the Prince of Peace? When war-dogs are. muzzled, and' for ever in leash, the voice of the priest will be silenced for aye. . But the apostle of the New Faith will be heard in the land and the people shall rejoice under the blue dome of heaven, and the laughterladen voices of the happy children shall be borne in gladsome music “over dale and hill” where nature’s banners wave green and fragrant. And there shall be ! no more thieving kings, nor. lying states- | men, nor armies, nor bloo'dshed, nor i hunger, nor.rags! Q / ’ : Just thehthe great cathedral organ, j capable of-.rendering in faultless harmony ' .so much that is classical and inspiring ; piped out a little bethel air, and the people around me sang irieaninglessly to , the roof,t —and. my thoughts were brought ■ back to tile hard stones, the Lard hearts, ! and the harder facts. And then T saw and heard the wealthy drop coins: into a : bag as a thanksgiving offering, and pass put with never a thought of the men or the blood! or the rag!