THE HIDDEN GRIEF.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17027, 28 April 1923, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE HIDDEN GRIEF.

(BY WALT MASON.) Each fellow lias his dark blue sorrow, his fierce, corroding grief or care, and one, some sympathy to borrow, will talk about it everywhere. He’ll buttonhole the brass-bound copper and say, *• Please listen while I tell in language strictly chaste and proper, about the woe that makes me yell.” And he will stop the village banker, who is intent on honest gain, and cry, ‘ L have a secret canker, a large threecornered convex pain.” He corners now the earnest pastor, he backs him up against a wall, to tell about xhe grim disaster that o’er his life has cast a pall. And how the people dread to meet him, at sight of him their faces pale ; they’re tired of all the woes that eat him, they’re weary of his rancid tale. Another voter has a trouble, a man size grief, a super woe, and yet we hear his laughter bubble as be goes weaving to and fro. “My grief’s a private thing,” he reasons: “why advertise a heart that’s sore ? To air mv sorrow at all seasons would make of me a; dreary bore.” And everywhere he goes he’s greeted with smiles that warm his careworn heart : to priceless stories he is treated by all who meet him in the mart.”