THE SKETCHER

Otago Witness, Issue 3832, 23 August 1927, Page 73

THE SKETCHER

HERMITS. Fresh in wild holiness over Each glittering mile, 4nd green with the blessings of Cellach, There lies an isle, Foundered on its own shadow Of brambles and grass— Its salvage of brambles still bending, Where saints sang the Mass; Yet healing of sleep and the quiet Of wells still are there, With cold rushes telling their beads On stones of dumb prayer ;

Lay oars to the thole pins, 0 row there These townlands of men Are hedged from the quiet that even Nods a lake, hen ; From under their hills of blackthorn, Come and row; From under close branches on waters Grown blue with the sloe ; And away, when a day moon is fooling The full birds home, We’ll pull until sunset has dropped To luminous foam.

0 would we could land on that island And gather its calm Into our wild hearts in a twilight Of candle and psalm; Watching the ebb of old waters— And with a new’ flood, The salt of your shining beauty Stinging my blood ! Then what if cold death is growing Deep in each bone. Love can not end with two ashes Under one stone. —F. R. Higgins, in the Irish Statesman. DOES IT PAY? “If I could only earn a pound or two myself, it would be such a help,” is the wail of many a wife to-day. They hear of Mrs This and Mrs That adding to the income by doing all sorts of work, and they imagine that these women are greatly to be envied. But, as a matter of fact, they only see the bright side of the picture. They know absolutely nothing of the drawbacks attached to being wife and part breadwinner too. It is far from being the bed of roses so many stay-at-home wives think, and often when outside work is pressing and there is illness or other troubles at home, the earning wife heartily wishes she had stuck to her own business of housekeeping and left the outside job to those with no special hometies. So much money can be saved by the woman who does her own marketing and housekeeping that, unless she can earn a really decent income at outside work, she had much better look after her own affairs than leave them to others.

When a girl marries it is with the Understanding that her husband earns the money to provide for the household, while she does the greater part of the spending, using his earnings to the best advantage for the welfare of the home. And there can be little doubt that they are the happiest marriages, where both husband and wife keep to their own spheres of moneymaking and home-making. I have seldom known a woman running the two jobs of money-making and home-making without something or somebody suffering. Very often, when necessity compels a woman to work, the husband may be bitterly opposed to it, either simply because he is a good fellow and cannot bear the idea of l>is wife having to provide what he feels should be his share in the home making, or because he has too much pride to let her do anything lest it should reflect upon. him. In the latter case it may mean very hard lines upon his wife, for I have known cases where a woman without any children, and with the chance of a half-time job. was unable to take it because of her husband's prejudice. As a result she had to spend those winter days without a fire and have practically no meals at all unless those to which he came home. But, unless in the case of such necessity, I don’t believe that a woman should go outside her own home, especially if she has children, and I am sure that she will save nothing by her outside job. unless she has very unusual and special abilities.

She will have to pav some one to look after the children, either a housekeeper by day or a girl to take charge of them while she goes out. She will never be sure that they are being attended to When she is in the- house she will be tired, over-strained, and over-worried. She is likely to do her shopping in a haphazard way ; her mind will, not be on the business of planning and cooking food, and she will have to resort to a “ fry” and other hurried, expensive and indigestible meals, instead of l serrving properly-cooked and nourishing ones. If her house is run by a maid, there •will be a great deal of waste in coal, gas, cleaning materials, and left-over food, all of which mount up in the course of a year. 'All these, plus the wages and food of the help, have to be deducted from what the wife earns outside. If there is anything left over, it will be comparatively little—certainly not enough to make up for the strain upon her constitution.

As to the little luxuries she can buy, t)ic majority of men would rather live in the most economical way on the simplest fare paid by their own earnings than Upon luxuries which their wives provide. Of course, there are other husbands who do not care who keeps the pot boiling, so long as it boils ; but if a woman encourages this sort of attitude in a man it is likely

to bring disaster in the long run. Taking things all round, except in rare cases, the stay-at-home wife has very little cause to envy the wife who earns money outside. It is a woman’s nature to make the best of a bad job, and, when it has to be done, one naturally talks of the advantages and discounts the disadvantages connected with it. But, argue as you will, a woman’s earning capacity is not an anchor to tie a man to domesticity. The toil of a wife may lead to a bank account, but it is the wife who makes a “ happy fireside clime” who holds her husband faithful to his hearth and home.—Nora Macleod, in the Glasgow Weekly Herald.

LOVE POSTPONED. I was a fool to put your love away, As if it were a treasure I could save For some inevitable rainy day. Love does not ride on every seventh wave, Nor burst with crocus-certainty each spring. Why did the thrifty proverbs of my youth Make me too cautious for this transient thing, And set a spinster Prudence up for Truth ? Suppose we meet again and set the stage, Dressing with care to speak our lovers’ parts, Will the old words still flash upon the Pag e > Will there be any laughter in our hearts? I was a fool to think that love would linger Until I beckoned with a tardy finger. —Ruth Fitch Bartlett, in Harper's. THE GREAT NILE MYSTERY. In these days, when we have a tourist agency advertising the trip of 5700 miles from the Cape to Cairo, it is difficult to realise that only a century has passed since the man was born who solved the ages-old mystery of the source of the Nile. John Hanning Speke, who died accidentally at the early age of 37, was born at Ilminster, in Somerset, and, like his companion on his first expedition of exploration, Richard Burton, saw service in the Indian Army.

Speke was a botanist, and, but for his untimely death, might have become famous as a naturalist as well as an explorer. Like most scientists, he possessed infinite patience and perseverance. He learned from actual experiment, and did not form judgments from preconceived ideas. In’ this he differed essentially from Burton, who was argumentative, hot-headed, and had a difficult temperament.

When these two were sent out together to Africa by the Royal Geographical Society their difference of method became at once apparent. Speke wanted to press on at once and investigate for himself; Burton wanted to remain in Unyanyembe to collect information from the Arabs about the Lake regions. A quarrel between them was inevitable. Speke, to whom inaction was intolerable, pushed on alone from Zanzibar, and, as all the world now knows, discovered the Victoria Nyanza, so named by him. When he returned to Burton, his companion laughed at his discovery. They returned to England, and Burton, in his books, “ Lake Regions ” and “Nile Basins” proved to his own satisfaction, at any rate, that Speke was about 1000 miles out in his calculations as to the source of the Nile.

Speke could not rest until he had induced the Government to send him out again, this time with a companion of his own choice, Captain Grant. IT was on July 28, 1862, two years after they had started, that Speke found the great stream of the White Nile flowing out of the Victoria Nyanza, near the Equator, and the great Nile mystery was at an end.

Here is Speke's description of his first glimpse of the stream issuing from the lake:— It was a sight that attracted one to it for hours; the roar of its waters, the thousands of passenger fish leaping at the falls with all their might, the fishermen coming out in boats, and taking post on the rocks with rod and hook, hippopotami and crocodiles lying sleepily on the water, the ferry at work above the falls, and cattle driven down to drink' at the margin of the 'lake, made in all—with the pretty nature of the country, small hills, grassy-topped, with trees in the folds and gardens on the lower slopes—as interesting a picture as one could wish to see.

In another decade, possibly, the scene thus described will be as well known to the tourist as the Niagara Falls.—John o’ Lohdon’swWeekly. >' OPHELIA. Lift-and drift with your tresses, maiden, Far outspread like the treacherous weed. Fold your arms with the blossoms laden,

They are the last flowers you will need. Draw your dress, let it drag you under: You are f :e of your world's wry wonder. Sink and think, as you fall to sleeping,

Of ditties and catches to fill your mind— Not in death, where there’s no dreamkeeping, But to ease what you leave behind, For you’re leaving, believe you’re leaving, The scene of your weakness and love and grieving. Die. and lie, with no headstone raised, Where a brother will fight with the man who killed The love in himself, and a maid halfcrazed ; He tramples now on a heart that's stilled, And first to suffer finds suffering splendid, And last to linger leaves nothing mended. —Robert Herring, in the London Mercury. FILM SECRETS. To the millions of picturegoers who believe that a film is photographed the way it is shown on the screen, a peep at the daily work sheet of a super film would be a big surprise. How the directors and their assistants steer a straight course in the production of, say, 2000 scenes, and covering a year and a-half in point of time, is one of the mysteries of the movies.

But one becomes gradually enlightened when it is stated that the director and his assistants work from' what is called the “ continuity sheet,” sometimes called the scenario. In the "continuity sheet the story is given in sequence with the sets mentioned, and instructions for photographing the action in these scenes from various camera angles, and mentioning whether “long shots” or “ closeup ” are required. In passing, it may be added that a “ long shot ” is a scene photographed from a distance, giving a vista of environment, the “ close-up ” showing the artists looking almost into the camera.

In a ballroom set, for instance, which shows not only the dancing, but the dancers walking in and out of the vestibule, or perhaps into the garden, action may be consecutive in the continuity sheet, but the scenes cannot be taken in sequence owing to the fact that, perhaps the vestibule set has to be built, whilst probably the garden possesses leafy bowers and rose gardens, which must be photographed elsewhere.

The director takes the entire scenes in the ballroom, and, maybe weeks or perhaps months later, the vestibule and garden scenes are photographed, care being taken that the dancers are dressed in their ballroom costumes. An illustration of this is given in “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” when one night a few weeks ago, over a year after commencing this massive production, the final scene of the picture was photographed, and the next morning marked tlie filming of the opening scene of the drama. These scenes are afterwards matched and interlocked with one another in unbroken sequence, leaving tire illusion that films are produced as they are written. The magnitude of the work on “ Uncle Tom's Cabin ” may be guessed when it is stated that nearly £500,000 was spent on production. —The Weekly Scotsman.

HELEN’S THREE DAUGHTERS. Slim are the bodies Of Helen's three daughters, Slim and as snowy As swans on blue waters. Like water lilies Asleep on the river Drift Helen's daughters Where leaves lean and quiver. Three silver minnows That leap in the shallows Dip not so swiftly As three girls like swallows. Fair as the lilies. The leaves, and the waters; As minnows, and swallows Are Helen's three daughters. —Lawrence Lee, in The Virginia Quarterly Review. THE MOST DIFFICULT PROFESSION.

If an intelligent woman were asked whether she could live the rest of her life with one and the same person, she would say: “ Good heavens, no 1” If she found herself in circumstances that compelled her to it, she would—-being an honourable and kindly person—take ceaseless precautions to see that she neither got on her companion’s nerves nor put herself in the position of being intolerably fretted and jarred by the consta-t or recurring presence of the same person. Say that she liked and respected her companion, she would expend in the effort a very great deal of thought and intelligence. Say that the other person is the man she loves, and the chances are that she will leave intelligence out of it altogether, and proceed on the calmly monstrous assumption that love will save her all trouble in the matter. She need only say: “ I love,” and seal it by agreeing to marriage and a joint life, to receive for ever after the devotion of a grateful and adoring husband.

When, being (in spite of appearances) an intelligent woman, she comes upon hours or days when her husband irritates or disappoints her, she puts it down to his annoying ways, or the innate

stupidity of man. She does not put it down to the real cause, his constant presence about her house and in her life. And consequently she does not wonder whether he may not be feeling the strain of her eternal companionship. And so it goes on. If «he is of an uncompromising nature, and has married an uncompromising man, the end is commonly a crash, the Divorce Courts, or a lifetime of ceaseless bickering and estrangement. In more cases, and since the greater number of human beings ere x.indamentally kind and anxious for peace and a quiet life, their marriage settles down into an amicable affair of six of one and half a dozen of the other, of smothered dreams, honourably suppressed resentments, and half-cynical, half-generous avoidaned of trouble. But call that marriage! Call that a successful outcome of the ecstacies, the shared delights of first love! Call a cabbage a rose, and sec whether it smells as sweet. That is not a successful marriage. It is a mere glossing over a failure. It is Mrs Adam coming to an arrangement with her chief creditor, Mr Adam, so as to avoid a disgraceful bankruptcy. No. Marriage is, without exception, the most difficult profession in the world. It puts a greater strain than any other upon a woman’s wits, her kindness, her sense of humour, and her brains. It is a task in which she should expect no help. —Storm Jameson, in Good Housekeeping.

DEATH-WATCH. o Shall I remember, then, the w;.v you came | As one remembers silence; will you be j Lip-still when other voices speak to me j Filling hushed rooms with echoes of your s name? r t These candles set your face against the I night s Sharp as a sword. Your eyes are folded a fire. ® Ah, what pale flame burns out its own - desire 1 Under the vigil of a greater light? Let brown oak be your laurel, wet with r snow; r Let resin-scented pine be now with you ( Who loved the trees because their strong ( roots knew The dark blind way of earth that men r must go. ... < For earth is good to one who tasted deep • Of sun and harvest. In that narrow 1 place More still than this bright stillness of - your face ( There shall be sleep, men say, there shall ■ be sleep. —Ruth Lechlitncr, in the Evening Post. 1 BENEDICTION. Let me grow quiet In this sanctuary I My flesh is hot with the burning of the sun ; Let me creep close to this altar Where cool waters run. Let me kneel at benediction Swaying with the music Of twilight. Straying down cool aisles Where verdure swings its incense And evening walks with surpliced step To light the candles of the night. Here will I cool my body. Here will I bathe my heart In the waters of love. I shall rise refreshed With the pressure of God’s Hand on my brow To steady me while I stand. In the heat of another day! —Margaret Lee Keyting, in the Commonweal. FLOWERS WITH CHANGED NAMES. One of the delights of a garden in a foreign country is to make the acquaintance of old loved friends under new titles. They may still smell the same, but a new name often makes us see their qualities from a new angle. And who docs not like to grow more intimate with the characters of long-known friends? One's love for the shy, white snowdrop, for 'istance, grows more appreciative when one realises the courageous efforts she has to make to get here so early, an effort expressed in her French name, perce-neige. She becomes more wistful to us when we visualise how, tucked in snug and warm there [ below’, wrapped in her cosy green leaves, • she throws back her bedclothes, and cries: > “ Up! Break through the snow, and > gladden those poor, drab, winter-dulled . mortals!” Lucky snow around her! t And what a new’ light wc get on the . daffodil, always regarded as a bright, • cheery, gay flower, vieing with the spring t sun in its habit of gold, when we hear j it termed narcisse a flour penehce—“ nar- - eissus with the drooping blossom.” Its r trumpet loses somewhat of its saucy bold- - ness under that title. 1 France has a curious habit of disclaim- • ing the plants other nations attribute to e her, handing them over either to some 1 third country or else taking their nation--1 alist pride out of them altogether, giving ■ them some quite plebeian title. French e honeysuckle in Frav.ee becomes sainfoin I d’Espague. French marigold, oeilet e d’lnde; while fair maids <f rance lose r their honour in their own country as well 8 as the romantic beauty of their title, and turn up commercially as renoncules des ) fleurists. In fact, judging from flower a names only, one might apply to France :s Napoleon’s epithet of England as a :o' “nation of shopkeepers ”; besides florists, ;e the dyers boast of their own flower—-

brickthorn—carthame des teinturiers.—■ Ella Winter, in the Windsor Magazine.

LISTER AND HOLMAN HUNT. Lister the surgeon and Holman Hunt the painter were born in the same year, 1827. Some of those who read or scanned the many columns that have been devoted to their centenary celebrations envied the power these two great men possessed of helping mankind (writes Lewis Hind in the Daily Chronicle). I, like countless others, have benefited by Lister’s world-changing discoveries, and, strange to say, once I saw him perform an operation. I did not see the whole of it, because at the first spurt of blood I fainted. Nothing would induce me to repeat the experience, but in the days of my youth I was eager for any kind of new experience. It was in the early ’eighties. Among my friends was a medical student at King’s College Hospital, and one day he remarked casually to me: “Mould you like to see Lister operate?”

“ Of course I would,” I replied. Said my friend, “ It’s quite simple. I'll meet you at the hospital. Swing your, hat by your side, then they’ll take you for a student, and you’ll struggle in with the crowd.”

1 found myself wedged between excited students just below the ceiling of the theatre; down below, far below, was the operating table, and behind it stood tho great Lister— tall, composed, dignified. He wore a frock coat. Of that lam sure. I suppose the modern antiseptic coverings had not been evolved. I saw the steam spray—spraying on the patient ; and I remember that, before beginning. Lister turned up the sleeves of his frock coat. How white his cuffs were ! As I have said, I did not see much of the operation as, at the first spurt of blood, I fainted and slid to the floor. I was kicked. Medical students in those days were rather unfeeling.

FOREST TREES Two of one, yet not one. The same parentage, but different mould. Grace of its own,**life of its own. Glorified, but the sweat of man. The land-boat and the sea-wagon, Separate, but the same thought, Beauty in both, music in both. Poems of the water, songs of the field, Sailing to windward, or standing by barn.

Born of death, yet beautifying death. Calls of the night-time, calls of the day. Lowing of oxen, and the wind-driven tempest, “ Making fast ropes,” and the grinding of keels. Deep in the hay-fields, and the mending . of nets. Lean on us here, and look on us there. Washed of our paints, our highways li>j different. Chance made us comely, loved by all nature, From green-covered glades to jetsam on shore, From age to age waiting, mankind will wq serve. — Philippa Powys, in The Nation anti the Athenaeum. “ PRE-WAR.” . . . Her fourth floor room whoso pleasing proportions were discounted by the clash of crude colour and design run mad that hail chanced to be in favour when her lean purse permitted the extravagance of renovations. The long low walls, ran in uneven stripes of black and hot orange, broken by sinuous traceries of a green that never was on land or sea. There were but throe pictures-—bizarro cubic ecstasies, expressed in splashes and spasmodic angles, the whole illumined by an immense Chinese lantern of many colours.

In lucid moments. Alison Owen frankly despised herself for thus doing violence to her own saner standpoints, from sheer cowardly dread of being dubbed a “back number,” and losing her desperate clutch upon the flying skirts of youth Had she genuinely caught these measles and mumps of progressive art it were another matter, but in secret she far preferred the mumps and measles of an earlier decade. She was fatally “ pre-war.” and she was doing her adaptable best to conceal the fact that she could not honestly appreciate these pictures without perspective, these verses without .rhyme (and often without reason) this crazy punclnation and discarding of capitals that, wcro tlie hall-marks of modern art. And to deny one’s personal values was to siii against the light. The clever, voluble young , p ople, with cropped heads and jutting cigarettes—who flopped on her floor cushions and talked, and talked, and talked —did presumably believe in their false values, or no values at all. For them only the new thing counted. With positive relish they spurned the past from which they bad sprung, as if a flower should deny its roots.—-Maud Diver, in But Yesterday.