ALICE'S LETTER TO HER READERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1890, 10 February 1888, Page 33

ALICE'S LETTER TO HER READERS.

As there is such a dearth of local news, amvaements, and pleasures, I think I cannot do better than talk about our local troubles. Lately I have been doing some visiting among the cottages, and find the cry of hard times not so exaggerated as may be imagined. In some of the suburbs there are streets with half the men residing in them out of work. You go to a neat cottage and the wife will tell you that for years she and her husband worked to make the home, until it became their own. Then sickness ensued, or the husband was thrown out of work, the house had to be mortgaged, aud now nothing is their own, and there is a large family to support. People who are in receipt of stated salaries and live among the pleasures of the city can scarcely realise the struggles of the poor. Not to be able to order a new dress or to go to all the amusements seems to be hardship almost unendurable to some. I should advise anyone who is in a discontented frame of mind to do a little district visiting among the poor. lam not saying that the poverty is not in many cases the result of improvidence, but at the same time there is a great deal of it attributable to causes over which the unfortunates have had no control. Picture a desolate looking cottage on a hillside with dreary exterior. You knock, and wait for a considerable time before there is an answer. Then there is a shuffling of feet, and the door opens. A girl about 11 looks up into your face. God help her 1 such a weary, old, wise, wistful face ! She is dressed in a dowdy old brown frock, very much out at elbows ; on her arm is a young child, at her feet are several others all more or less dirty. She smiles up into your face expectantly. You ask for her mother. She is out washing at the big house up there. You look " up there" at the big house, and, knowing the lady, you call. You walk through the garden, sweet and luxuriant with flowers ; in the vinery and greenhouse there is a wealth of bloom. In answer to your ! ring a young servant girl nicely dressed opens the door ; you are ushered into a beautiful room, richly furnished — there are signs of wealth on every hand, costly pictures, soft carpets, and pretty knick-knacks. The lady of the house receives you in a pretty costume, and tells you how hard times are. Hard times in homes like these ! — the words sound a mockery ; |well fed, well 'dressed, luxuriantly housed, it is impossible to feel hard times. The only thing is a lack of ready money, and if there is no money ifc is a shame and disgrace to use things not absolutely necessary that cost money. No one has a right to live in luxury unless they can honestly pay for it. Position, custom, have nothing to do with it ; there is more real gentility, more honour, and nobility in living down to a little than living up to what does not belong to one. A false pride keeps the "genteel" from working. They dread the comments of those they have been in the habit of entertaining and of being entertained by. But with all the cry of hard times there is prosperity too in hundreds and hundreds of homes among the upper and middle classes. Money to spare upon self indulgence and luxury; and " hard times " is a convenient cry of wolf when they want to run from distasteful responsiblities and take shelter when there are calls upon generosity and charity. Tovisitthe cottage homes, to seethe mothers toiling among a crowd of little ones, nursing

the baby, amusing, the scarcely more than baby, dressing the others for school, cooking the dinner for their return, scrubbing, washing, ironing, and mending, and doing all this cheerfully, with a kindly word for the stranger, and a little kindly deed too ; these are the women one pities when the husband is out of work, for they feel the want of every shilling. They have by their faithfulness and industry, their frugality and good nature, deserved a better fate.

Ah, ladies of fashion 1 to cure you of discontent do a round of visiting among the working classes. In one house the mother of a young family lies hopelessly stricken with paralysis, and the husband out of work. When you are ill there is a soft luxuriant quiet ; here there is noise, want, and confusion. In a house in the same street you find that the husband is ill in the hospital, the wife toiling for the bread. A little lower down you come upon a group of motherless little ones, and the poor father trying to be mother as well. These are no fancy sketches — your minister or doctor friend whom you meet daily could point you the way to all this. It is a shame, then, to make yourself wretched because you cannot get as many new dresses as you would like,

Next week I shall have more fashionable weddings to tell you about, and the week after that the opera; then come the races and the race ball. For the present we must be content with expectations.