PATER’S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3614, 19 June 1923, Page 61

PATER’S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

LIVING. The Miser thinks he’s living when he’s hoarding up his gold. The Soldier calls it living when he’s doing something bold. The Sailor thinks he’s living to he tossed upon the sea, And upon this very Subject—no two men of us agree. But I hold to my opinion as I walk my way along, That Living’s made of laughter and good fellowship and song. I wouldn’t call it living to be always seeking gold, To bank all the present gladness for tile days when I am old, I wouldn’t call it living to spend all my strength for fame And forego the many pleasures which today are mine to claim. I wouldn’t for the splendour of the world set out to roam And forsake my laughing children and the place I know as home. Oh ! the thing that I call Living—isn’t gold or fame at all; It's fellowshio and sunshine, and it’s roses on the wall; It’s evening glad with music and a hearth fire that’s ablaze, And the joys that come to mortals in a thousand different ways. It is laughter and contentment and the struggle for a Goal ; It is everything that’s needful in the shaping of a Soul. * * * * “THE COWBOYS’ PRAYER.” Once in Cheyenne, Wyoming (writes Helen Hope, in London Daily News), I was invited to a cowboy’s party. One of the boys repeated for ray benefit a little thing called ‘‘The Cowboys’ Prayer,” which they all knew. I specially remember one of the verses, which ran tlms: I thank Thee, Lord, that I am placed so well, That you have made my freedom so complete, That I’m no slave of whistle, clock, or bell, Or weak-eyed prisoner of a walled up street. Just let me live my life as I’ve begun, Give me the work that’s open to the sky, Moke me a pardner of the wind and sun, And I’ll not ask a life that’s soft or high They had a hard life, these boys. Strenuous days, rough quarters, long hours, small recompense. Yet there they were, thanking God, not for material benefits, but for the absence of them, for the freedom to live the life they loved. * * * THE FAIRY TALES. Boys, I know, are popularly supposed to be much too matter of fact, to read fairy tales, but many do and it is well. Writing on some of their creators, an English author has just made the following interesting comparison between the work of Hans Anderson and Lewis Carroll:—Hans Andersen tells of the Wild Swans, or the Snow Queen, with naive gravity and simple good faith, and children of all ages listen in the same spirit to history as it should have been. Lewis Carroll’s work has the gossomer lightness, the sparkling gaiety, the brilliant paradox of Gilbertian comedy ; but Topsyturvydom is not Fairyland, and marionettes, how pleasing soever, are none of our kin. In “Wonderland’’ the skv is a painted ceiling with gems for stars; in place of tender moonlight there are coloured lines; and a laughing conjuror instead of a wonderful magician. In Andersen and Grimm the storks build cn the old liehened high roofs, the wild swans flv across rushy plains and gliding rivers, the wind voices talk strangely amongst the shadowy ravines and solitary peaks of the mighty hills. Under the dim starshine and over the ghostly -snow the wolf goes gliding where the black pines whisper. And the old peasant woman sits at her wheel, and the tired woodman, axe on shoulder, plods towards the beacon of blue smoke seen above the trees, to share his soup or sausage with his simple Gretchen. and to tell of the trolls or the witches to his little blue-eyed daughter with the braided golden hair. In “Alice” there is undoubted good humour, but no tenderness ; in seas of the abnormal not a drop of mystery. It is like a quaint air without a bass. I suppose what one misses in Lewis Carroll is the human touch and the fairy glamour. In childhood we stand in some awe of the fairies—we take our magic seriously. “There is an austere fear in our regard.” Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren’t go a-hunting For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping altogether: Green jacket, red cap, And white owl’s feather! But who is afraid of the Mock Turtle or the Slithv Toves or the Black King ? Even the Jabberwoek cannot excite a shudder. I have had, as I said before, two Andersen periods. The first of his tales I remember reading were “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Goloshes of Fortune,’’ and “The Wild Swans.” The one which most delighted me, and stayed longest with me, was the story of the'dung hill beetle, who was angry because the emperor’s charger wore golden shoes. Andersen had a talent for what is nowcalled animism. He made beasts and birds, flowers and trees, coins, flagons, and broken toys talk, and talk as wittily and as pleasantly as the characters ia Mr Anthony Hope’s “Dolly Dialogues.” And as a child I revelled in animism ; perhaps most children do. « * # « n WHERE TIME DOES NOT MATTER, Of the many contrasts one notices out here on the veld after a stay in London

(writes Leonard Flemming from the Orange Free State), the most noticeable—and perhaps the most enjoyable—is the slow, easy, peaceful pace of everything. In the sleepy, silent heat of a summer's day life seems only just to move, and that is all. The oxen pulling the plough plod along a.t the rate of two miles an hour; sheep, horses, natives, all walk slowly. My horse takes nearly two hours to do the 12 miles to the country store. The train that crawls across the distant, quivering veld looks like some tired caterpillar. I can see the smoke of it an hour before it passes some five miles below the farm. It takes five hours to do the 60 miles from here to Bloemfontein —and if I miss that train I have to wait 24 hours for the next one. Everything- is slow — leisurely—peaceful. Time seems of little account. If my watch stops I do not know what time it is until sundown. A printed card, showing the time of the sun's setting for each day, is the only means I have of regulating my watch. And taking our time from the sun we conform to its pace. Of the many difficulties one has to get used to in a veld life that of working with a staff of black “boys,” who do not understand time as recorded by watches and clocks, is a puzzling one. To this day I cannot tell my “boy to “plough for two hours and then let the oxen out of the yoke for an hour.” The Kaffirs know neither hours nor minutes. And so I mark off the piece of land the “boy” has to plough and I tell him to rest until “the sun is about that high over that hill” (pointing to some vague spot in the sky). I tell him that I want my horse “shortly after sunrise,” “shortly before sunrise, ' or “when the sun is over the top of that tree.”

Outside the house it is fairly easy; there is the sun. Inside the house—well, I used to eat either charred or underdone meat until I bought an alarm clock, and having set it to “go off” at tne time at -which the meat was to be put into the stove, I too was able to go off — to my work.