COWARDLY SENTIMENTALISTS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17835, 1 May 1926, Page 18 (Supplement)

COWARDLY SENTIMENTALISTS.

<By AXXE FAY RE.) The subject of the tender-hearted person who spoils everyone within range is. of course, as old as the hills. They are frequent figures of fiction, as well as real life: and in neither do they appear to get their deserts. These sentimentalists, who shelter themselves behind the plea that the}* are so sensitive that it hurts them to say an unkind word to anyone, even though it may be their obvious duty, forget that someone else has got to do the job for them—unless society is to go to pieces. Xot only that: but there is another injustice, inasmuch as the person who does the work they leave undone—the reprimanding of the slack servant, the inefficient clerk, the intractable child, and so on—is going to become more or less unpopular, while these cowardly sentimentalists bask in a spurious popularity, and are considered by the delinquents “ so sweet.” f3ecause a person can give a ‘‘wigging ” where it is deserved, she is not necessarily hard-hearted. Many a conscientious mother has punished a child and gone away and cried by herself afterwards, followed, perhaps, by the black looks of the sloppily sentimental