CURRENT TOPICS

Southland Times, Issue 17642, 4 May 1914, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

UNSENTIMENTAL WOMEN. The London Daily Mall makes earnest plea for the unsentimental woman, that most misunderstood of females by mankind, of whose sterling worth many of us have ample knowledge. “ She is a little mannish in her aspect,” says the -writer, though very far from a plain woman. Perhaps it is her sportsmanlike garb and her •'hail-fellow-well-met ” manner, rather than her cast of face that makes men shy of her. ” She is a Well-defined modem type,” declares a friend, " particularly disconcerting to mankind. In reality these seemingly unsentimental women who hide their feelings so aptly, are wells of sympathy and tenderness when once the right note is struck, but because they neither gush nor demand to be borne like the proverbial burden of the pilgrim, many a man passes them by a little shyly, and in fear lest any declaration from him may be treated with ridicule. They are generally most lovable women to women, and they receive the secrets and the troubles of their more obvious sisters, and let the stories of success or shame sink right down into their kind hearts, never to be recounted, but co bring forth at every memory a fund of pity for the sufferer. They are always the confidant of the foolish and their practical aid oft times saves the wreck of two lives. They live in a sea of emotion, and yet it passes them by, somehow, and too often the grey hairs come without bringing to them the joys of wife .or .motherhood, and they sink quietly into

v -~~ ~ ■ told •ge. thelr only solace the love of Innumerable nieces and nephews, real and tod Opted.** ■ "7 : --’- ' There ought to .be some school for linen, where the art of discovering the false from the true >mlght be inculcated, and then the unsentimental woman ■would .come into her own. Curiously enough she has never lacked the adoration of poets. Moore’s “ Ministering mangel ” most have been a sound unsentimental sort of girl, and our own Gordon evidently pictured her when he (Penned the lines — -As a strong love shielding a weary lover, <X would have her shield men with shintag breasU ” —The Swimmer. Swinburne seems also to have rather leaned towards the type, and certainly Longfellow had her in mind as the model of Efvangellne. But in real life abt is apt to frighten off the suitor, tWho lives, in all probability, to greatly .Tegrct his mistake when his goldentourled and sighing angel has developed A temper and a taste of letting him do more than his share of bringing up the (family. Child labour on dairy farms. “ Things are not so bad as they were, settlers are getting in a better 3>osition. Those are isolated cases.” Mr T. Moss made those remarks at •the "Wellington Education Board’s meeting during the week in referring to a (report of the Truant Inspector in regard to cases where children had been absent from school or had been late in their arrival owing to having to milk cows. The Inspector had reported that he •■knew of instances where “slips of girls” had been sent to the top of hills at sunrise to milk cows, and then, after being at school during the day. had to jfo home again to milk the cows. In smother instance, a lad ten years of age had to milk six cows night and morning. Some children had to milk from live to ten cows as well as take milk ■to the factory, and there was an instance where they had had to do this for a period of six weeks when suffering from whooping cough and unable to attend school. In still another case a mother had informed the Truant Inspector that she and her two boys had to milk 40 cows night and morning, although she had afterwards denied this during the hearing of a truancy prosecution. “ It’s a sad story,” said the chairman (Mr R. Lee), “but I’m afraid we can do nothing more than to express our strong disapprobation of parents who allow their children to perform guch work.”