GUIDE NOTES

Southland Times, Issue 23989, 2 December 1939, Page 18

GUIDE NOTES

By BIG GUIDE

“Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.”

The special effort by the High School Guides this year took the form of a concert. In the camp-fire scene, with which the programme began it was not at all difficult to imagine oneself in camp, so realistic was the fire, built in true cobhouse fashion, and the group of Guides seated round it with the glow of the fire lighting up their faces. The songs, too, were all camp favourites and went with a swing that recalled happy camp fires on summer evenings. Then followed two dramatic items, “The Tragic Quest,” a drama in six acts, and “The Robbery in the Turret,” in both of which the audience was given something altogether different from what the titles led them to expect.

The curtain rose next on the Company Culinary Orchestra, in which, as the name suggests, we suspect the kitchen utensils found themselves in’ a somewhat unaccustomed role. Some of the musicians’ individual efforts caused much merriment and the item proved very popular.. The last item was a play .“Inasmuch,” written especially for Guides. The time is a week before Christmas and the characters a patrol of Guides who, as the result of a dream, determine to

meet again on Christmas Day, each with a gift for the Christ Child. When the day arrives the Guides come to their meeting place with a strange assortment of gifts—one with an empty cage for she had given her bird its freedom; one with a garden hoe, representing the work she had done in the cottage hospital garden; one carrying a dog with a bandaged leg; and another leading the Maori girls, to whom she had brought the Christmas story. Throughout the play ran an accompaniment of Christmas hymn§ and carols from an unseen choir, now near, now far away. What impressed the audience most was the sincere and reverent way in which each girl acted her part, and so well did they carry their audience with them that one could hear the surprise and wonder in the last scene when the curtain was drawn aside to reveal the Madonna and the Manger with the angels watching over them. The play was an ambitious undertaking but one that was well worth all the thought and work that had been put into it.