OUR PET VIRTURES.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXIII, Issue 3006, 18 October 1912, Page 2

OUR PET VIRTURES.

[By A.B.C.] ■■ I often think that the virtuie people talk about most, and claim as their very , o\vn,!s exactly the one they are most deficient in. When Uriah Keep talks about' being "' umble," you may be sure he has his eye on a partnership in the firm. I know a woman whose life is a pose, who never seems natural a moment, or to speak a natural word right out from- the un'regenerate heart of her ; and yet her pet virtu re is truth. What volumes of verbal contempt she pours out on any direct lie, even the most innocent kind; what appalling lectures on the wickedness of any deviation from the set' line of accuracy in describing an incident. If any of her unlucky men folk attempt, as men folk . will, to introduce a little Rumour into a narrative by means of judicious embroideries, she is down upon them, a picture of outraged virture, contradicting them in all the points, that made for humour, and laying bare their enormities to the amused auditors. And yet there is no truth in her. An open direct he she would probably be afraid to tell, but subtle deceitful suggestions are for ever on her lips, and she thinks nothing of insinuating the most dreadful things about persons with whom she has quarrelled. Then how otten we hear the lazy man descanting on the grandeur and nobility of work, in capital letters. He leans back in his padded chair, stretches out his icet in their comfortable slippers, and tells us how the world has been built by workers—how the hewers of wood and drawers of water are the saviours of their race. And then he lights up his pipe, and goes on to say that it is only by self-abnegating work, and strenuous unremitting eftort that we can ever accomplish anything worth accomplishing in- this world. And perhaps he' ss right; and then he goes to sleep' alter dinner and dreams, prechance, of great things done. It is the lax mother, perhaps you have observed, who talks most about the value of parental control.' I knew one who had a thousand ideas on the subject of control, and not one practical device lor gaining it. While she gaye free voluble advice to all round, her own children grew, up like weeds, and were a pest tq.the neighbourhood. It is just.^tS well now and then tor aIP, I ol us to Jeave off talking ot our pet. virtues,/tmd try to cultivate them instead. )