AUNT HILDA’S LETTER.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 833, 5 August 1933, Page 18 (Supplement)

AUNT HILDA’S LETTER .

A STARLAND RAINBOW

A Light That Bound the East and West.

J)EAR STARLETS ALL,— Safe and sound I am in Starland after three weeks of happiness and fun in the warm-hearted West. I can never forget the thousands of happy faces at the parties and in the schools, nor the merry laughter amongst old and young. I have only to shut my eyes, too, to see anew those mountains of home-made cooking and those hundreds of very, very small people who toddled or came in prams to our round of parties. Such a lot I learned-about you all, how you live, what you look like, what you do for a living, what your schools are like, and how far you have to walk to school; even the colour of your eyes I know now! And I saw crowds of things about the Coast. I know now how to say the names of the far-away places and what difficulties and handicaps there are to be surmounted. But more than ever do I know and realise how much our children’s page means to those remote homes where there are so few pastimes. To-day, instead of the song of the tuis in the bush or the friendly hail of a passing motorist, I hear the hurrying feet of the office-boys, the hustle of the trams and the barricade of noise that closes in on city people. I left Westland green and growing, lovely in rain or shine, and after three weeks of greenness, saw Canterbury brown and bare with tussock, its grey shingle soft and restful looking, and realised Aat it, too, has a beauty quite different from the other side of the Alps, a beauty elusive perhaps at first but lasting in its impression. Otira school children waved a friendly welcome home on Tuesday, and I saw little knots of children gathered at the front door of several lonely homesteads. We live so far apart, our lives and ways are different, yet in our common work and interest in the page -we build and enjoy a happy bond of friendship, that grows closer with the passing years. And if my visit has given to the Coast children a tenth of the pleasure and insight it has given me, we will have cemented our work together most stably, and the future will be happier still. On the way home a beautiful rainbow lay across the. Alps, one glowing end in Canterbury and the other in Westland. I called it the “ Starlet’s rainbow.” It was a lovely thought to think of all our little friends joined across the mountains by a beauitiful arc of glowing light. And now’ to all those thousands I have seen and to the thousands more who stayed at home this side, a happy greeting. There is something very nice about our own little rut, isn’t there? But we often have to go away out of it a little while before we realise the comfort of the little place where we each w-ork and live our best. Pollyanna has done splendid work in my absence, and Mr Joke-Box is fatter and ruddier than ever. Soon I’ll tell you of lots of little souvenirs I have brought back from far-off places, but that, is all for now ! Happy thoughts and love to you 1 all,— N