THE SKETCHER

Otago Witness, Issue 3882, 7 August 1928, Page 71

THE SKETCHER

LITANY FOR NEW MEXICO. Bless God for the day!

Bless Him for the wide clear-flowing New Mexico morning, ° Poured round the shadow pools, Gilt on the cumbres.

Bless Him for the nooning, When the white thunderheads with sails full bowing Sleep on the three wind rivers. Bless God and praise fiim For the west-sloping hour of siesta Under doomed cottonwoods, That in a rainless land make ever 'he sound of rain.

Bless Him for the evening; For the releasing cool hands of the wind On the flushed headlands; For the lilac and larkspur veils Let down by the mothering mountains Between the work that fails and the dream that lingers. Bless Him for home-coming sounds— The window-shine on the loma, 1* or the welcoming flame and the savoury smell And the snuggling cry of the children. Bless God for the night! r Bless Him for the keen curled sickle that reaps The saffron meadows of the sun’s late sowing; For the full-shaped globe of wonder, Pacing the eastern ranges. Oh, bless Him more than all For the ever-reeurrent orb that emerges Between the light that goes and earth’s oncoming shadow.

Bless Him for shared sleep, . For the midnight’s healing fountain, For the companionable cock-crow, warn-

ing The sleeper back from dreams to the pastures of morning.

Bless God for the dawning, For the earth collecting Darkness again to her breast, For the hills resounding Clarion blue to the sun’s relucence.

Bless God and praise Him With exceeding thanksgiving For His gift of the day and the night! —Mary Austin, in Poetry. STANDING TOO MUCH ON CEREMONY. Don’t allow your sense of the correctness of things to stand in the way of enjoyment. Somehow men seem to be born with a capacity for enjoying themselves, while women, generally speaking, lose half the fun of life fussing over trivialities that don’t really count at all! Take the matter of entertaining, for instance. Men are much-less inclined to stand on ceremony, and they airily waive aside formalities in favour of a convivial evening’s enjoyment. Now the female of the species—and all credit to her, up to a point —is knee-deep in detail from the word “ go.” * * *

This typically husband-like remark and its reply will illustrate my ineaning:

. “ Who d’you think got into my carriage this morning, dear? I looked up from my paper and, bless my soul, if I didn’t see old Harry Jones sitting opposite! Haven’t seen him for years. Oh, by the way, dear, I asked him to come along to dinner to-morrow night, and bring tin; wife.” “ But, David, you know we broke -dike of the wine glasses the other night, and I can’t possibly afford to replace it this month. And, besides,. Mrs Jones would be sure to notice the hole in the drawing room carpet, and they can’t send a man along to mend it till Thursday.”

“ But, my dear ” No use. David can “ But, my dear! ” till he is blue in the face. His wife and he will never see eye to eye on this matter of entertaining. * * *

The Fenwicks and the Tanners were married within a month of each other —two young penniless couples—very much in love.

During the first few years that followed they were constant visitors to each other’s houses, 1 just dropping in during the evenings for a friendly chat over coffee and sandwiches, and later on a little sit-down supper was provided. Then Tom Tanner began to make his mark' in the world, and the Tanner household became possessed of “ a staff ” - —first of all a daily girl, and as time went on they moved to a larger house and the staff was plural. For a while the mutual entertaining continued as of yore, but gradually Mf>s Fenwick felt herself unable to live up to the Tanner hospitality. She refused their invitations on this pretext and

that, feeling all the while that they would be criticising her own menage when the time came for the return visits. Thus a lifelong friendship was sacrificed on the altar of false pride, and triviality gained the day. u And the moral is to be found in the “ Dont’s for women ” category under the heading of, “Don’t lose sight of the main issue in pursuit of unimportant detail.”—Women’s Weekly. THE NAVY AND MARINE MEMORIAL. (Inspired by the Navy and Marine Memorial. movement, which plans erecting a national shrine to those who have been lost at sea.) Where is the ruddy adventurer Who went where ships could go? Where is the rainbow soul that sailed Wherever Salt sprays Blow?

Where is the fine marine we knew Who loved Every harbour And sea? Let us sing on the shore of our land. He comes Through the night To you, To me. The sailor, that drowns with the drowning stars Lives with the stars of the sky. The broken marine goes down* Grows dim, Yet his proud wings flame on high. Star souls that break in the breaking waves Are reborn in the bay that clears. Then look to the sky. They are there on high Outsailing the storms And years, My dears, Outsailing the storms And years. —Vachel Lindsay, in the Herald Tribune.

HELPING HANDS. A peep into the classrooms of any Montessori school or any school that follows the Montessori system must convince the average onlooker of at least some certain good in the method. The tiny doll’s house sinks where the tiny tots wash up, the gay little dressers where they keep their cups and saucers must make the habit of helping themselves not only second nature, but even a real pleasure. This article, however, is more about the little people who help others than about those who are taught to help themselves. Little people should be taught to help each other as well as help themselves; but it should be on a give-and-take basis—not the one child everlastingly helping and giving in to another. For this makes for selfishness on the one side, and often for the overtaxing of kindness and energy on the other.

The name of “ little mother ” has not been given to the eldest daughters of large or even small families without reason. With a large family particularly it is only natural that a mother proper should be glad enough to shoulder just a little of her responsibility on to her eldest girl. It would be rather unusual, too, if that same eldest girl did hot wish to help, but in large families particularly—if such things there be in these days—mothers should be careful to see that too much responsibility is not shifted on to youthful shoulders.

We have most of us read of little girls —scarcely more than children themselves —getting an entire family up in the morning, taking small brothers and sisters for airings, or minding the baby. This still happens perhaps where mothers have to work unthinkably hard, and have no pennies to spare for paid help, and it happens, too, in a lesser degree where mothers do not work so hard, and where there are pennies to spare. We can most of us look round and see the results of too willing helping hands. This accounts, perhaps, for the number of spoilt babies, for the youngest always having its own way; they have sisters and brothers, or at least an elder sister as well as parents at their beck and call. It accounts, too, for the number of eldest daughters, and some eldest sons, though in a lesser degree, who are imposed on to quite an alarming extent. It even acounts for some perfectly charming women remaining unmarried. Mother relies so much on her eldest girl. She becomes almost indispensable to her family, perhaps; they take up all her time, and so deprive her of other interests.

Mothers who have the welfare >of each one of their children at heart should,

therefore, watch this sort of thing. Let Milly brush Bobby’s hair, let her read him stories, let her help to dress him, but as he grows to a proper age, teach him in turn to help Milly as much as he can. Let him not come to rely upon her too much or make a doormat of his willing-hearted sister. In most nurseries there are natural leaders just as there are in other walks of Jife. There is generally one little boy who tends to be king of the castle more often than the others, or- a little girl who drops indisputably into the role of Queen of the Fairies. Let the little boy conduct his band, let the little girl be teacher, but see that they don’t indulge in too much ordering about. ......

Children are human, as we are, and they are swift to take advantage of those who are prepared to fetch and carry for them. And the sad part about it is that often enough in the long run it is the youthful potentates who suffer —even more than their willing subjects. If their parents are” unwise, and do not' bother to discourage them from taking that attitude, such children will grow up with that overbearing manner which makes so many people unpopular. — Women’s Weekly. ROVING SAILOR. Linaria cymbalaria, the familiar ivyleaved toad-flax, or mother-of-millions, is also called “ roving sailor ” in Cornwall. There is good evidence that it is not a native British plant, but was introduced by Mr William Coys to his garden at N. Oekingdon, in Essex, about the end of the sixteenth century—where (as Mr Gunther tells us in “Early British Botanists”) it still grows, and whence it has spread over most of England.

“ Roving Sailor, whence do you hail, sir ? ”

“ From a far country, away to the south! ” “ What is your race, and what is your name, sir?” “ A long .strange name that is soft in the mouth.”

“ Roving Sailor, when did you land, sir ? ” “ Many long moons and centuries gone.” “ Where have you lodged in the long dim years, sir?” “ Lodged me in nooks and crannies of s i one.”

“Roving Sailor, what was vour inn, sir?” “ ’Twas a fair garden, where erst I was set.” “ After long travel can von not halt, sir ? ” “ Nay, I must wander to far lands vet.”

“ God be your Guide whatever betide, sir; Fair be the havens wherever you fall; But—wide though you wander—you bide still beside me, Blooming all months on my grey garden wall.” —Agnes Fry, in the Spectator. WIFE’S DUAL ROLE. “'When I married I made up my mind about one thing—that I would make ray husband a good wife.” How many girls make the same sort of resolution ? How many keep it ? Most brides, in the flush of the early rapture, don’t realise what they are saying. It sounds nice, and they mean it;, but that is all. When it comes to livi’ g up to it it is quite another matter.

What does living up to it mean? It means doing what your husband wants, not what you want. Living his life, very much, thinking his thoughts, sharing his enthusiasms and opinions, and so on; striving, at anyrate, to obliterate yourself, your own outlook, so that even if yoa don’t agree with your husband you ion’t show your disagreement; vou just remain acquiescent. “ What a hopeless position for a wife,” you say, “to forfeit so much of herse.f! She might just as well be dead! ” Yet is it as bad as it sounds?

The words quoted at the beginning of this article came from a woman who is now seven years happily married. She says she is ever sv much more interested in life than she was before, that she and Imr husband rarely have arguments, and so on. She liscovered that there wasn t much in the opinions that she had to give up because they ■were not so much opinions as prejudices, things of family tradition that she had grown up with, and not worth the possessing. It would have been immateria. to her then whether women adopted trousers, say, or flappers had the vote; she would doubtless have argued these matters hotly, according to her prejudices. But

now, having absorbed herself in her husband’s individuality, as it were, she had, as a result, genuine convictions. Again, her desire to make her husband thoroughly comfortable as regards his creature comforts—good cooking, sock-mending, laundry up to time and in place, and so on—had formed in herself a fastidiousness in these matters, and life became more varied in consequence.

Again, and most satisfactorv of all, h r husband, being a “ sport ” in the true British sense of the word, plays the game and takes no mean advantage, but, on the contrary, makes all kinds °of concessions, which one rarely sees in the 50-50 arrangement, where the wife has her “ rights ” and the man his " rights ” in equal division, an arrangement which often results in a squabble, one person charging the other of taking too much and giving too little. A girl would be surprised how much of herself, her real self, comes out when she resolves on adapting herself to her husband in every thought, word, and deed. It needs brains and pluck. Miss 1928 has both.—“A Happy Wife,” in a Scottish exchange. THE MOUNTAINS STOOP TO HILLS. The mountains stoop to hills and hills to stones, That shrug and wrinkle, hunch their backs and crook A rhythmic stairway for the water tones To strike clear intervals and cause a

brook To lead a melody, arpeggios Might hurry to a precipice and lose, If shorter gaps, cautious rests, softer blows Forgot to intervene, or art to choose: Below, the music broadens to a stream, An island interrupts with dissonance; But contrapuntal fusion saves the theme, And reaches resolution in the sea.

Horizons round the cadence, close the trance ' Whose stones and water carve a symphony. —Alfred Kreymborg, in Harper’s. MRS POYSER. Mrs Poyser steps into “ Adam Bede ” as a figure of energetic crossness. O;i her first appearance she has been “ speaking her mind ” as to the dirt men bring into the house on their shoes at dinner, and “ she has not yet recovered her equanimity on the subject, though it is now nearly three hours since dinner and the house floor is perfectly clean again.'' In that house, in which everything has been cleaned and polished to such a brightness that Hetty Sorrel can use the pewter dishes and the oak table as mirrors in her many moments of vanity, Mrs Poyser seems continually to be running about looking for somebody or something to find fault with. “ Do not,” George ' Eliot warns us. “ suppose that Mrs Poyser was elderly or shrewish in her appearance; she was a good-looking woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion and sandy hair, well-shapen, light-footed.” There was nothing of the Dickensian riotousness in George Eliot’s imagination. She could not “let herself°go” even in play—and the creation of a Mrs Poyser is essentially play. She was more acutely conscious of her duty as a realist than of her rights as a humorist, and so the portrait of Mrs Poyser is constantly toned down till, with all her wit and wisdom and eccentricities," she seems a little more ordinary than a novelist should have made her. I myself should have preferred Mrs Poyser rather uglier (in a pleasant sort of way). I do° not quite believe, indeed, that *she was goodlooking and only 38. Her philosophic turn of thought and speech seems to call for a few grey hairs. Her comments on life are those of a sage ripe in experience—especially her comments on the relations between men and women. The proverbial sayings with which she garnishes her conversation also seem the natural speech of longmatured wisdom, as when she says:— “It’s hard work to tell which is Ohl Harry w-hen everybody has got boots on,” and again: “ Some folks’ tongues are like the clocks as run on strikin’, not to tell you the time of the day, but because there s summat wrong i’ their own inside. And we feel the same in regard to ner touching comment on Martin 1 oyser s old father who loves simply to watch things: “Ah, I often think it's wi’ th old folks as it is wi’ the babbies; they re satisfied wi’ looking, no matter what they’re looking at. It’s God A mighty’s way o’ quietenin’ ’em, I reckon, afore they go to sleep.”—Robert Lynd, in John o’ London’s Weekly. IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE. It may be very unprogressive, but I am not quite sure whether I like to think of where the advance of science is leading us (says “Friend About Town,” in the Glasgow Weekly Herald). It doesn’t appear that there will be anything that science can’t do in the not far distant future. These reflections come from the fact that it has recently been stated that the domestic cow will soon cease to be a power in the land, because it has been discovered that just as good milk can be made from grass. Certainly milk has always been made from grass, only hitherto by the agency of the cow, it is, so I understand, possible to do without her. About this, one- feels rather like the little child who was shown a giraffe for the first time, and said reproachfully to her father:— “ Daddy, I don’t lielieve it! ” I don’t

believe that the foaming hot milk for one’s morning cup of coffee can be produced just from grass without Mrs Cow. In passing, why is it that milk is always described as “foaming”? Yes, it’s correct, but why? Not long ago I read that there will be no criminals and no crime in the future. Science again! If in early youth any symptoms of what may develop into criminality are noticed a slight and insignificant operation will be performed, and the whole nature of the patient will be altered. What, I meekly asked, will become of all the poor lawyers who batten on the wrong-doings of others? Having lived for many years on the proceeds of law, I felt the matter was a bit personal. But no one seemed to have thought of the lawyers in the future scheme of things. . And sciencei will doubtless find another occupation for them. ANGUISH. Nothing can chain the days— I have no time for dreams. Stop these days, someone, So- I may stretch my white body. Why do you chain them by sevens? Why not by many hundreds? I am irked at seeing them Laid forever, neatly, in rows. Be the day grey or blue, You have named it. Who calls that ball of fire the sun? —Doris Campbell, in Poetry. DEFIANCE. i My song shall flow unceasing as the tide, And words make their defiance to the sun; I am caparisoned in ancient pride, Dowered for battles lost or battles won. And through all fleeting days, at my right hand Waits earth’s mad beauty, timelessly arrayed, And on my left pale clouds like pillars stand, Bearing their strength to • keep me unafraid. For I have put my trust in passing things,— In loveliness that melts before a breath, In thoughts washed shining at the mind's clear springs,— These are eternal in the face of death; And armed with these, their splendour and their truth, I shall be strong, and keep immortal youth. —Bernice Lesbia Kenyon, in the North American Review. THE ELKHOUND. Amongst the many varieties of foreign hounds that are exhibited at the Kennel Club shows in Great Britain there is not a more pleasant looking dog than the elkhound. During the last three years it has become immensely popular on both sides of the Border, and large classes of them are to be seen at the larger dog shows. Lady Irwin, the wife of the GovernorGeneral of India, was the founder of the British Elkhound Society in 1923, and it now boasts a big number of members. Lady Taihorde Malahide has done much to popularise the variety, and has imported several beautiful specimens into this country.

The elkhound is very similar in appearance to the once better-known variety the eskimo, which became famous through its connection with the Peary Arctic expedition across. Greenland. The elkhound is, however, much smaller and not so wolf-like in appearance. Both have very dense coats, with a thick, y. oolly undercoat to resist the penetrating snow and cold. The eskimo dog is a North American variety, whilst the elkhound is a native of Norway. The former is largely used as a draught dog for drawing sledges, whilst the latter is used for hunting elk in Norway and Sweden. He has also a good nose, and is sometimes used for tracking the bear. Both dogs are very fast, and have great powers of endurance. Kane, the explorer, reported that he did 700 miles with his dog team at a rate of 57 miles a day*. The elkhound is a cobbly-built dog with powerful rib and great lung capacity. He has a shapely head with erect ears, which give him a very intelligent loo'-. He is sagacious enough in every way, and is a very sturdy dog for his size. His tail is carried over his back, and it is tightly curled up or twisted, as the term goes. Elkhounds are of a very pretty silvery wolf-grey colour, the outer- hairs having tips of black, which give the coat a beautiful finished appearance. A very docile type of dog, and capable of great affection for its owner, this native of Norway seems as if it is a true ladies’ dog. The ladies, indeed, are the Lest supporters of the breed, and several very large kennels of hounds have been established during the last year or two. The elkhound is undoubtedly one of the coming varieties. —Jqmes Garrow, in the Weekly Scotsman.