COUSIN BETTY’S LETTER

Southland Times, Issue 22008, 6 May 1933, Page 18

COUSIN BETTY’S LETTER

—QUOTATION FOR TO-DAY—-“We must write the music, whatever the song Whatever its rhyme or metre; And if it is sad, wc can make it glad, Or if sweet, wc can make it sweeter.” Author Unknown. (Sent in by Cousin Jean Nichol)

My dears, my dears, my dears .... Have you ever squelched through mud over your shoe-tops, and squat clipped grasses stinging you as you passed, and balanced perilously on wire over a little stream? Have you ever met the sun squarely on a high hill, and from a rock gazed on a fair land beneath all wet and shining, and you so high that, smiling down, you felt the glory of God? And impelled by some mistily-divined impulse, have you started downwards. again, bubbling like a tiny stream that secs the sea to run to —slipping over morn-polished tussocks, catching your feet in darling rabbit-holes, sliding, running, greeting the cool and silence with your spurting laughter? if you have done these things, my cousins—if you have felt the glory and the wonder of being, the excitement and the peace of being alive and in tune with every wriggling insect and every spear of grass—then you, too, know the reverence and joy that’s simply bursting from me to be shared with you all. Lucky, lucky children who live in the country, and have these things all around you .... Lucky, lucky children who live in the town, to be able to know by contrast the keener joys of the country .... And this is Southland, my dears—and Southland, too, the aqua-tinted sky with fine trees etched upon them reflecting massy shapes in still flood waters—and blue snow flooding distant mountains in a warm glory sunlight has never surpassed—and civilization reduced becomingly to a quiet checked apron of neatly trained paddocks with bindings of fairy-trees .... .... “Thou didst look down Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose. All these fair ranks of trees.” Cousins my dears—l, too, looked down, and forthwith rose such fulfilment of beauty that my heart stood still .... And so I’m truly glad it rained, and I’m truly glad we aired our grouch about the weather ; because ever since the weather-man has been keeping a sulky eye upon us, so that the sun has been able to slip through in all sorts of unlikely places—Still, we’ll have our Bad Weather Page just the same, and give him a thorough over-hauling of a fright! Remember, all the drawings must be in by next Wednesday. May 10, and all the written matter by ffic following Tuesday, May 16. Oh it’ll be fun—jollier than angry now, because having looked down on this month’s beginning, I couldn’t feel resentful ever again of such a poor old blundering mortal as the weatherman. Perhaps he gets blinded when he looks earthward on so much glory . . . . Anyway I'm sure he suffers from acute indigestion through not eating the proper things, nor drinking what’s good for him—so let’s pity, pity him 1 And now further good news of the Isabella Dryburgh School—my dears I am absolutely considering having a gramophone record made hymning my praises of those children and their teacher—then you could turn it off when you were really tired of it! Anyway, next Tuesday morning the children are going along to the Winter Show with their 1933 exhibit —this year they have specialized in the making of dolls’ furniture—wonderful pieces they are—and one or two of the cleverest boys have achieved model aeroplanes. Their good friend, Mrs Challis, is taking charge of them, because Miss Macdonald will be away on holiday, and is going to arrange their exhibit attractively for them. So, when you’re going the rounds of the Show, and have come to the school section—which you’ll probably start from, anyway!—take a deep breath before the section marked “Isabella Dryburgh School”—one and a half inches each I’m allowing you to swell with pride ! Now run away and begin your holiday preparations and have a happy, healthy time and lots of fun. And those of you who are not going away, come up and see me next Tuesday—and write me so much for the page that I’ll feel dizzy—that’s the sort of dizziness I simply adore ! My love to you all? My dears, it’s billowing over all the rooftops of Southland to you these days— P.S.—Will somebody- “write up” the Isabella Dryburgh School exhibit for next week’s page, please.