COUSIN BETTY’S LETTER

Southland Times, Issue 20675, 22 December 1928, Page 22 (Supplement)

COUSIN BETTY’S LETTER

MY DEAREST COUSINS, When I sit down to write to you and remember not only that this is the fast time I will write to you in 1928, and must include my Christmas and New Year messages to you besides, but also that this week marks the fourth birthday of our page, I realize what it feels like for the heart to*be full to over-flowing. There is really little I can say, my dears, that can even the smallest part convey my thoughts to you, Little Southlanders. You must know, my dears, that when I wrote the first page, four years ago, I did not dream what it was going to mean to me, nor what a hold the children of Southland whom I was inviting to write to me, were going to have on me. My initial idea, as you know, was to remain a ‘‘Cousin Betty” unknown to any of you except through the page, and in my ignorance I thought I would not wish to have closer contact with you; but it was not long before you clamoured for more, and at the clan-meetings which preceded our first bazaar, in 1926, I began to realize how much I had been missing, and content to miss, before. Since then we have been in many activities together, and at all times I am glad when some of you climb those endless stairs to see me after school, perhaps, or on your holidays. Knowing you has become a great joy to me, my Cousins, and I hope we will have many more happy and fruitful years together before the great adventure of living calls some of us further afield. To-day I know you will not have much time for reading, with the Hospital Celebrations to be present at, so I won’t keep you. Remember, 2 o'clock at the Hospital, and all the flowers you J>ring, in addition to the Christmas Tree and Santa Claus, and the fruit I will purchase with the money you have sent, will help to make Christmas brighter for many patients, I believe. And I’ve good news for you—Cousin Annie Williamson is coming down from Baklutha to receive her medal, and Cousin James Botting will also be there to receive his watch. And now I want to thank you for the nice presents you have sent in for the tree, you and those many grown-up friends W’ho have sent gifts and mess4ges, too. In addition I wish to thank the members of the Lodge Waihopai No. 189 for their beautiful donation; also our old friend, Mr Findlay, of Oteramika Road, whose lovely flowers have been a constant source of pleasure to me and benefit to all of us, and w’ho never forgets us in our work. I don’t want to talk about work at such a time, dears; but do please remember the plays and bazaar for 1929, during the happy, healthful holidays I wish you all. Enjoy yourselves, now, Little Southlanders, and learn to play as ardently as you have worked i during the four years I have known you. And let your New Y’ear resolutions be not too many nor too ambitious for you to keep. Wish for happiness and for usefulness, my dears, for the one is dependent on the other. And I will wish that when our page resumes in 1929, it will be the beginning of our happiest and most useful year yet. The magazines you must apply for to the office, not to me. Tell your friends about them, and see how many houses in Southland you can equip with them. One little word more—about your Birthday gifts. Splendid, my dears, splendid! And although one must never criticise nor attempt to classify one’s presents, I want to make special mention of one of the cleverest stories we have published in our page—l hope Cousin Peter Ferguson will have time to contribute more regularly next year (there’s an indication of what his Resolution should be!) in order to develop an ability which is undoubtedly bristling with future possibilities. Cousins, my dears, I want to thank you, finally, for your many remembrances of Christmas. To you all I wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and to each of you goes a very large slice of the love of a proud, happy, and confident