AUNT HILDA'S LETTER.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 809, 8 July 1933, Page 26 (Supplement)

AUNT HILDA'S LETTER .

(By Special Arrangement with Jack Frost.)

WESTWARD HO!

Fun and Frivolity Fast and Furious.

J)EAR STARLETS,— Next Tuesday sees me off to visit out Westland and Buller people once again, and I have been looking at a map to see where I ought to go. I find there is hardly a place on the Coast that the “ Star ” does not reach and where we have children enrolled. Elsewhere I have printed a list of places where Starlets who are really enrolled live. What a list! It will be impossible for me to visit all these places, but we must do what we can to meet each other. Canterbury Starlets can improve their local geography by following on a map the places that are visited. It will be fun to take your atlas by the fireside and come with me in imagination to all these spots, some of them in very remote comers. But the policy of our page is that the child who is farthest removed is just as important as those in the city; more so, in fact, because his needs are greater. It was a thrill to me last year to see the “ Star ” being thrown off all along the route by the service cars, and to know that the children out back were sharing our fun. Every train that comes east from the Coast carries letters to Aunt Hilda; every flag station yields its quota. And aren’t we delighted when we find a Starlet in a place we didn’t know before! Pollyanna’s tongue gets all twisted up trying to say the new words, and Mr Joke-Box just smiles *and looks wise when I ask him where the new place is. “ I thought everybody knew that,” is all he says, and leaves me wondering if he himself really knows! Next Saturday, Schaefs Hall at Greymouth will ring with the laughter of hundreds of happy people, as it has not rung for a whole year, and our party song will be sung and broadcast to all the bush birds who may be listening-in! Fancy the fantails hearing “Party day is here again.’* Ha ! Ha ! Even the frogs, I expect, will wake from their winter sleep! On Monday, the 17th, there will be a party at Runanga, and the Miners’ Hall there will re-echo with the sound of merriment. Westport by then will have added a happy memory to its list. The grown-up readers of the “ Star ” in both Greymouth and Runanga are following their parties by a grand ball, and the net proceeds of every function will be devoted to local relief. Next Saturday I shall tell you of the fun as far as I can reach the page* before it goes to print. Keep the pages crammed full while I am away, and well all be happy. And now* Jack Frost appears to be sorting out a specially big chilblain for me. I’d better be off. Love and happy thoughts to all, —