AN AVOIDED NAME.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21198, 2 December 1930, Page 6

AN AVOIDED NAME.

Written for (he Otago Daily Times. By W. H. L—“ A KIND O’ TROUBLE IN HER BREEST, DOCTOR.” There are persona known to us whose toames we never mention, though their existence is never for a moment forgotten. The same is true of some things: it is true of the thing of which I am writing. It is 40 years since I first met this thing in the life of one within the circle of my love and care, but its name was never mentioned by anyone in our circle. The thing, with the avoided name, as I saw it then, recalls not a battle, but a long Biege which sapped the vital powers one by one. In the intervening years I have Been . that thing in other homes, but by a kind of sympathetic unspoken understanding we all avoided the use of the word. During these 40 years I have tried to find a euphemism for that name—some softened word which, when spoken, would not strike the heart with such a stound, bat „ i 1 h r ve ?. ot !? und al >y such softened that when James Noble brought his wife Aihe to see the doctor, as we, say, he did not use the name of her sickness; he spoke of it as “a kind o trouble in the breest." “Some kind o an income we’re thinkin', ” he said. income is a Scotticism for a disease that comes without any apparent cause, and not as the result of an accident or of infechom When the clerk of the hospital to which Aihe was brought posted a notice for the students he used these Ivords w only: An operation to-day. J. B. olert. He avoided the word.' When “b® students, eager to secure good places, crowded into the operating theatre, they mrnply asked:, "mat i a the case? 5 ’ Which side is it? they said “ the ease,” it ; they avoided the name. The surgeon who performed the operation did not use the name, neither did the doctor "who tells the story. In recent years, and especiaffy in recent months, that name wmcn 1 nave been avoiding for 40 years Has come into very common use. It appeaM in headlines in the newspapers: it | subject of leading articles; it is cabled from overseas; it figures in the announcement of generous benefactions; it gives the name-to financial campaigns ?^ g =ic S v d by Public-spirited men and by +w W £“ en * V hy , - is 1 aßk my self, that this word which I have been avoiding for 40 years is now in all the newspapers and on everybody’s tongue? Is it that the thing itself has become more common than it used to be. and forced itselt into our speech—-or is it that we Have more confidence in dealing with it. Probably for both reasons. The disease, it is said, claims more victims than it used to. It is also said, and said with emphasis, that the proportion of cures is greater than .it was. The doctors are more definie and explicit in their statements of relief and removal, if they are given a fair chance by the sufferer in a course of lectures on health, which AJr John Brown gave to working people a ?°’ bei spoke of “the doctor’s /“I sur5 ur , duty to tbe doctor.” Our duties to the doctor are four, namely l + , to trust him; to obey him; to tell him W tJ i? wh °le truth, and nothing hfm th^* ruth i „ and - finally - to reward wW. tells a story of a Patient So 58 +{? be J leaca . was , so complete that the doctor handed him a prescription for stomach trouble, and said: There’ take that, he went home, chewed the paper and swallowed it. He L e i’w t t d on bis next visit that like the old Hebrew who ate the roll of the book, leeI ee v n §- decidedly better for his faith and obedience. More to my point just now, however, are Dr Brown’/urgent words on tbe duty of telling the tfuth !w n th t, Wh °iJ 0 trnth to the doctor: “the doctor may be never so clever, and never but he can no more W tr n at o s_ illness without knowing all about it, than a miller can make meal without corn; and many S or lost ,f rom the patient concealing something that ®°Hiething that was +« -6 silliness of this is only equal to its sinfulness and peril.” One reason Jhy we do not tell the truth to the not* hid fh Ve 110 doubt ' is . that we have SSHi * to tell to ouri ** W 6 BwQlt it to OUT OWn hs&rtfl St r p l ain tan fS'nfid d ander co ?Pulsion of ff ea * pain. Confide in your doctor fetrS tdl hit “ tbe fc , truth and tC

AN- IMMORTAL STORY. Although it is only a little over 7R wrote “Rab and Tiitaf r rf Moynihan, in hia Oration delivered recently, called toe story immortal. Seventy-six years does takeTem «« immortality, but one may the iu'hZenl f and accept Roval cSbf« «?« the P resi dent of the HriFs£l'- oi S e “” t g;‘ “?“ b ,?» d Liue uieratnre. Brown’s storv has n ?an ?%* of literature as it he sSf-Yi’S? PfV. "re “ S**3SS sg *Jte drown .?^ enC j' neither can the floods i*’ nd 01 . sorrow which broke a ww h T fc i Aili . e a nd James were j. 7 Peasant in their lives, and in 2 «Ll he?r * Were i “it divided. Within mterval the Scottish winter cf Mrp Co lv e f d two Slaves With a mantle white snow. The story has written^ ‘veness of form; it is beautifully said - The central ??- the Picture are as vivid and Ailio^ul+v. mov ing things. 1 can eee Aihe with her unforgettable pale face, with its grey, lucid, reasonable eyes, full of suffering, full also of the overcoming of it; and its sweet, resolved mouth. I can eee her as she steps .down quietly and decently from the table, turns to the surgeon and the students, and curtsies to tnem as she begs their pardon in a low, clear voice, if she has behaved ill. That brave, gentle womanliness was nourished in close fellowship with the heavens ' i° tiic’ioys and sorrows of the earth. What could be better than the descrip- ’ tion of James after the operation? 1 can see him taking off his heavy shoes, crammed with jackets, heel-capt and toeputting them carefully under •. e * a .? 4 I can hear him as he says: Maister John, I’m for nane o’ yer strynge nurse -bodies for Ailie. I'll be her nurse, and I’ll gang aboot on my stockin’ soles as canny as pussy.” “As canny as pussy! ” What better description could there be of a good nurse with her soft, noiseless movements, both quick and slow, never in the way and never put of it? The story is the story of a dog, too, almost human in his affection for his mistress, and his grief at her loss. Rab supplies the humour .of the story as well as much of the pathos. The humour is quiet and genuine, and shines through the sorrow like fitful sunlight shining through rain. The description of Rab is, I think, a masterpiece: His body thick-set like a little bull—a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog; his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker than spy night, a tooth or two gleaming out of his jaws of darkness; his bead scarred with the record of old wounds, a sort of series of battlefields all over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leighton's father’s , . . a tattered rag of an ear, which was forever unfurling itself like an old flag. ... . Rab had the dignity and simplicity of great size, and the gravity of all great fighters.” Dr Brown said he never looked at Rab without thinking of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller. What a delightful ecclesiastico-human touch 1 for the moment it almost makes me wish I was a Baptist. Rab's grief for the loss of his mistress and master completely transformed the kindly nature of the creature, and made him impossible. They “ tempit him wi kail and meal, but he wad tak’ naething, and keepit them frae feedin’ Jess, the mare.” “Rah was buried in the braeface, near the burn, the children of toe village hia companions, who used to make very free with him and sit on his ample stomach, as he lay half asleep at the, door in the sun, watching the ■olemnity.” I think Lord Moynihan is right; the story will live. It deals with the_ elemental passions of love and grief, which are aa .old as time and as new as the morning; they are also as universal as the race and as individual as a man’s own soul; and it portrays them in language that is clear, vivid, moving and beautiful.