BROTHER AND SISTER.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 14725, 2 August 1921, Page 7

BROTHER AND SISTER.

WHAT THE ONLY CHILD MISSES

(By Essex Smith)

"But suppose Pauliue has a little brother or sister?"

"Pauline's not going to have a brother or sister," replied Pauline's mother firmly. "We really can't afford it." "Were you an only child?"

■"I? Oh, dear no! There were six <of us, in a ramshackle old Westcountry rectory. There wasn't much money in those days, but we used to have plenty of fun!" Her eyes softened and grew wistful at the thought of those laughing, struggling, sunny days. vßut, all the same, Pauline is to be an only child; for her one gateway into romance will be for ever barred and bolted. No childish jnemories of joys and sorrows sharped, in the earliest, most impressionable years will forge for her the .strongest of all chains—that between children born of the some par.ents.

In Serbian folk-lore the tie- between brother and sister is more .often the theme of romance than .that between lovers —in this tie' of kinship lies a mystic significance. George .Elliot recognised it in "The Mill on the Floss," the great English classic of brotherly and sisterly love. In "Wuthering Heights" Catherine Earnshaw cries out passionately of JHeathcliff," "He's more myself than ;I am! Whatever our souls are made .of, his and mme are the same." Such a bond as there was between .those two—strange, combative, but jail-powerful—is seen many a time .between brother and brother, sister 'and sister; a bond which finds no expression in caresses or words of affection, but is nevertheless strong unto death, its origin sunk deep in elemental truths.

Lovers may kiss and cling, \and swear eternal fealty; marry; then tire, and seek divorce —but -who £ha,ll ever be divorced from that elemental tie of kinship? "Am I my keeper?" asked Cain, and throughout the ages some deep instinct has answered "Yes."

Thus it is that to many of us, as an only child is a pathetic if not a ; tragic figure, barred from a thousand joys and hopes, and purifying sorrows, too. Pauline may have hosts of friends when she is grown*up; she may marry and have children—but there is one most precious comradeship 4a life that she will never know. "But -w,e shall be able to have a •really experienced nurse for her how," said Pauline's mother, "and send her to a first-class,,school later .—and if we had more children, in these difficult times. . .. What do you really think?" What did the . listener really -think? Not for all the gold that .came out of Klondyke would she have been an old child!