One Clear Call.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 18004, 26 April 1930, Page 13 (Supplement)

One Clear Call.

(By “Darius.”)

NOT very far from Here you will And a fair mound of dimensions fit to Hold a well-grown man, ■ and from the steeple of the church hard by the chimes ring with the clear sweetness peculiar to rich bells and birdsong. If you have been a diligent reader of this journal as long as I, you will, at the first hint, know who sleeps there under the wings of butterflies, in that northwardlooking slope favoured of the sun. When you have reached the distinction of being adopted into a community by your Christian name, as one is joined to the spirit in baptism by one's “given” name, your calling and election are very sure, you have risen high, you can never fall, and you are far known as a city set upon a hill. There was once a king in England who was known as ‘‘Farmer George.” I like that belter than Edward the Confessor, or any other monarch with a moral, religious or virtuous tap to his Divine Right. I would rather have a king who produced good pigs and poultry and sheep and was famous for them, than a whole island populated with Napoleons, who had mowed down legions as reapers lay the swathes of corn, and never -grew enough verdure to feed a grasshopper. The Knock at the Door. “Farmer George!” that is a fine title, but it is of another George I am thinking, who also has gone the long, mysterious way. “Poor George!” I foolishly exclaimed, when the news of his passing came to me. “Poor George!” repeated my friend, with a corrective intonation —“Fortunate George!” The simple breakfast prepared and partaken of, he was, as usual, ready for the day’s work, but the task was not to be the usual task There came a morning caller, who announced himself by an unmistakable summoning' knock upon the door. He h&d with him the pilgrim staff for the hand, and the sandals for the feet of the householder. Another way had to be taken by George that morning. At his age, some few years within the eighties, duty becomes habit, while it loses nothing of its eager charm, and impulse and Inclination to do good make service a pleasure to the man who has overcome selfindulgence. He asked no time to make ready. May no mischance befall the illustrious soul of George, so well-beloved here. Have we doubts about him as to finding his way across the vast? Had he no faults? We should not be interested in him; we should not have loved him so, if that were so, for then he would have been superhuman. “ O, deem not this no earth-born whl Could ever trace a faultless line; -Our truest steps are human still To walk unerring were divine.’ 1 Do you consider that is childish sentiment? Better call it simple, because all great souls have in them, as the soul of George had, that divine quality of shnpli:ity. They Come Eating and Drinking. They are temperate in all good things . neither gluttonous nor wine-bibbers, the great companionable men. They keep their feasts and fasts more in the spirit than in fact. They partake of a last _ supper or toast to the illustrious dead in reverent silence, being both God and hero-wor-shippers, as becomes the humble to themselves, who yet may be stern, aloof, and f even proud in bearing before the world. He would drink a pot of the good brown ale with enthusiasm, and appreciate no less the flavour and aroma of tea and tobacco. It is good that such simple appetites remain with us to the last; good after the hardness of the day to sit at meat in pleasant company, and to read from a. book, burning incense of tobacco the while; to gradually subside Into meditation, and then to lay aside the emptied pipe, and, with a last awareness of Life’s goodness—s-leep—■ while others, with brains inflamed and beclouded from some unholy banquet reel. There Is nothing of self-supposed virtue in such reflections. We are too ready to assume the goodness of our friends is natural to them, their kind faces so well masking the fierceness and tenderness of earlier years. By the Sun’s Altitude. I am not writing this to praise George, but to please myself, and, if I do not presume too much, our mutual friends of all the creeds, who love good men and good women, who have never questioned or blamed me except with voices and faces, expressing at the same time, much human kindness. As for George, his early altar remained his last-. The priest at the altar In his holy office was the servant of the Most High, and there was neither high nor low% no sin in tapers nor vestments nor incense, nor the turning of a phrase in prayer to meet the needs of a hypersensitive devotee. Religion seemed to imply unity in spirit, with charity in mind and

“ And After That The Dark.”

soul, as well as expressed in human speech and actions. Theological talks did not appeal to him. He set his course by the binnacle light of his own soul, knowing the sun at its meridian, and squared the yards of his ship towards that part with the mystic temple orientated on the hill-top over it. His course would lie, not westward, but towards the morning over the Sea of Life, and when he took the Pilgrim way on that morning it would he towards the east also. Would it not, seeing that the Light of the World, had gone over the border, and beyond the neutral territory of Twilight. All Known and Well-Beloved. We must find a weak spot in any character before v:e can love it much; and some are unfortunate in that they do not disclose their weaknesses. Think of the men,. and women too, who are most beloved. Are they the Puritans? Do you imagine that because a religious man sins he is a hypocrite? That because he has other tastes In meat and drink and lierature and sport that you are holier than he? Thou hypocrite! Do you imagine your righteousness gives more hope in heaven for the human race- than one moral leper crying with covered lip, “Wash me and I shall be clean.” Do you Imagine your whole satisfied and unetuous self is more nleasing even in the right human estimation than a black eunuch spotted white with leprosy who has a clean soul? Pardon for the rude inquisition. Be sure of this, your friend know r s all your falts better than any other; but he finds something indefinable in you that overbalances all of them; so it is with the mother and her children, so with the woman and her lover. The Earth, Not Earthly. . I would rather be a King of Farmers than a reigning monarch. We have too long spoken disparagingly of the earth, calling it. inanimate, and declaring there was not wisdom to be found in it, and that everlasting silence reigned in it. It is a hive of industry and a choir of harmony and the source of being and of wisdom. For ages the heavens taught us nothing hut fear and superstition. So it is we are now leaving the colleges and going back to the fields, with their living soils and trees and grasses, and living waters. The riddle of Samson about the honey to the lion is nothing to this feeding of our pastures upon the rocks of distant seas and extracting nutriment for them from the air. George was a farmer also. He loved domestic animals. He knew the faults and virtues of the agricultural earth and composition and relative values of manures, trees in bearing and the pruning and grafting of them. He owned an orchard with a row of walnut trees. He kept cows and pigs, and a horse or two; knew the habits of insects and of birds and owned and managed a newspaper, and could have been a member of parliament for his district, conservative of course, being of the yeomanry of England. As to books, he appreciated the humorous characters in Dickens and Shakespeare more than the pomp and tragedy of the plays and books. He liked the old authors who expressed themselves with more directness than subtlety, plainly and directly, and dealt with human functions and relationships with no mock modesty—like Pepys in his diaries (unabridged), Hazzlett, and the Decameron with the priceless illustrations. These are now turned down to admit the awful and suggestive sex-novels and purulent stuff of the pseudoscientists who exploit sex in marriage and celibacy. A Passing Shadow: Then Birds Singing, The man was the architect and builder of your town to a greater extent than any other. You of the last generation have added stature and dignity to and extended the civic territory. You do not remember her the punt that ferried the coaches across the river; the parson who swam the flood to join his expectant communicants; the first ward of the hosptal on the hill; the men who fought at Alma, Inkerman, Balaclava and in the Indian Mutiny. The founders of this city were remarkable men. George was one of them. Death makes no distinctions. Never once had I occasion to doubt my young judgment of him, and now I am a man, and dear old George, fortunate in his going, is no more. The judgment is sealed. Still I have a wish concerning him, and it is that some later Orpen may paint a picture of him, to be hung in a gallery of practical saints, who came, by no means unseated through much tribulation in pioneering. The sun has passed the meridian—a shadow passes across the lawn between me and the trees. It was not of a cloud. There is not one in the sky. What a sudden silence is this that has come upon the afternoon! Ah, there! The birds are singing once more in the garden.