Hills of Home.

Waikato Times, Volume 109, Issue 18342, 30 May 1931, Page 13 (Supplement)

Hills of Home.

(By Darius.)

ANY way you take that old story about the walking out of Paradise by the two first tenants, it has a very grave aspect. Those, however, who are accustomed to interpret folklore in their own way will see in it an aspect of present-day conditions, yet the analogy will not feature any fearful offence on the part of the evicted, taking the long grey road with lengthening shadows upon it. One cannot be intimately associated with farming without visioning that portion of 'primeval earth known as Eden from the farming point of view. There is nothing sacrilegious in that. Our imaginations are coloured by our. earliest associaTh'e first selection was stocked with every kind of animal. So far as tradition informs us no fault -could be found with the actual management. There were domestic animals'and animals of the wild-wood and the under man’s overlordship they were not afraid of him, because no harm had come to them through him. There were no boundaries or subdivisional fences. The estate was surrounded Iby natural ‘ canals connected with the great river systems of Asia which here assumed the proportions of natural highways connecting the plains with the sea and the dear hills of home. ■ This so-circumscribed Paradise was really an island except for a neck of barren lava rock that connected it up with the mainland by means of a great natural higharched bridge. Land and Stock Mortgage. The homestead was not an imposing structure for, as yet, architecture was not a highly-developed art. It was rnereli a fair green place bowered in shrubs. Yet even in those early days it had been named with the sacred name of Home. The earth was well endowed botanically, and the good wife, for love of the work flowers, busied herself all day with them, planting, tending, transplanting and all the rest that a woman does in her garden, in- ’ eluding the singing and crooning of inchntations to make plants frloom migh^iy. There was fruit on every tree, according to' its kind, and not much in the way of work was demanded from the husband, except to tend the orchard and cure his own tobacco. No one ever recognises the mere man’s part as being very onerous Sdmetlmes, tired at the day’s end, he could hardlv give a satisfactory account of what his all-day duties had been. He was, of course, the one who “kept the roof over the heads of the family," ,or intended to when the family arrived, and that was tnat. All very sweet and arcadian so-far, because debtor and creditor are not mentioned in this account. Money is always available when one is prosperous. Then one is persuaded to go a little beyond the bounds of discretion, just for developmental purposes, and so the first mortgage appears with, maybe, a second later on. No L fe > “ seems, can be an unbroken period of good times Even the oldest-settled districts, like the plains of the Tigris and the Euphrates, have had their times of terrible disasters. A Hard Row to Hoe. Was it not' well said the man on the land should be doomed to earn his bread bv the sweat of his brow and to harvest chis sheaves of wheat in tears. Even the ' elements are ever warring against him \ Drought, coming on the desert winds and flaved by a smoke-hazed sun, shrivelled the pastures, and after that'the rain descended and the floods came. All that pioneer pair had to show, .when the mortgagee took over" was their personal liabilities. That sort ’of thing is now of common occurrence, even as it was in the days before Noah. In this case it did not matter as the lately shrivelled pastures were lying under a heavy deposit of silt, and livestock and stock mortgage had been swept away toThe selectors, who had had a very pleasant time, were now again thrown upon their own resources. Life appeared m quite a different hue. They were back at the .chrysalis stage again and the chrysalis does not like the transitional stage which Is very necessary if uncomfortable. Behold the beautiful wings that Nature gives to those lowliest, changeful, evanescent forms of life. We leave it at that having no wisdom with which to complicate the eternal problem. ', A Civil Volunteer Regiment. We consider that life is dealing hardly with us and it is true. Life-has apt-uahy dealt a deadly blow to some, as deadly a blow as It dealt to those unfortunates pi tradition, who would play with the golden apple - against all advice. Yet some there are who suffer for faults not their own, indeed one might say there are many such, very

Taking the Road at Eventime.

fine writing has appeared lately about Anzao commemorations and the reason for it all. Civilians as well as soldiers grow eloquent. I have not earned the right by personal sacrifice to utter any eulogies, shout any .plaudits or moralise on the matter. I niay, however respectfully suggest that civilians should import into their conduct a part of the cohesion and comradeship the Anzacs have exemplified to the world. One may say “the world" with a magnificent utterance. Those fellows, wherever they may be, are aware of a bond of union, intangible but unbreakable. We may not be baptised into brotherhood with them by blood, tout we should become closer related by adversity, for even the vagabonds have their brotherhood of adversity. I wish we could all list in a volunteer regiment pledged to leave the arrangement of sacrifices demanded of us by untoward circumstances to the Government alone, and not to badger it by howling out about favoured classes and how the axe should toe applied to them. Let no class hatreds he engendered. Others direct their vocal darts at some imagined or real wealthy class. Some clamour about education. Class called to .class like the noise of many waters. We should be shoulder to shoulder. We have elected our representatives and If we cannot trust them we ourselves.are not worthy of trust. Those Anzacs had all"the odds of life against them. Arms, elements —water .earth and fire — .. while Home, arid the kind faces there, were but haunting memories that often moved to tears, and we are howling to makS the other fellow pay. We need the inspiration of example "to enable us to take up our swags and march, and to keep marching until we arrive at better times. Above all tfe need to sacrifice that readiness to point to the other fellow and say “You are the cause of all the trouble." There is too much “pull devil, pull tailor" about us and an unsettled political condition . is not - favourable to National credit. We do not need to be told that finance keeps its eagle eye upon results at the .polls. Do not let .us placard our past extravaganoes. The Dim Grey Road with Shadow# Ridged The scenes I have , allegorised to the conditions of to-day depict grave realities. A little household, numerically, has been forced to abandon its Eden. The sun, for two of them, has reached, nay rather passed the meridian of life, and is, though not very perceptibly, westering a little. They loved the earth and it was their living. There the family was born and reared to adult age. They loved the flocks and the herds upon the dear hills of Home;, dawn and sunset upon them and the sun and moon over them. The land did not furnish them with an effortless iiving. Responsibilities had been incurred in the way of guaranteeing others, prices slumped, the drought came, stock died, the rains descended and the floods completed the disaster. ‘Clearing bush, fencing, subdividing, building—they had made'a real home. I know, for I lived there. When I was not a visitor in the body I was .a frequent; visitor in the ’spirit. The atmosphere of the place was/an inspiration. . ■ •. ■ Books, even on :the shelves, were articulate, being friends. There was one sorrow, well-concealed. The Son, although he could not see from his far rest .the hills' of home looked down from his still place across to Lesbos over blue Mediterranean bays. There are only father and mother, and Margaret with hair as “yellow as ripe corn." The heart of the man has long 1 been avowed to kindness and in his heart are all the hospitalities and the courtesies of a knightly host. For Margaret’s music and song and her lovable ministering personality a new must be/ found. The songsters in the trees remain. They go well with the property and a silence in those groves would toe heart-breaking. And there was Madam (and I shall write and tell her so), sacrificing herself to the merciless god, Earth, and her flowers upon it. Did you ever notice how a fair gardener’s domain keeps encroaching upon the outer wilderness until the garden fairily queens it over the flower-lover, demanding more and more tribute of labour, and insisting “thou shalt have no other, gods before me"? - So this Is the going forth out of Eden, the actual and very real. Well she has had The pleasure of creating one paradise, and now the dear lady will not find it too late in the day to create another flowered and palmy oasis in the desert, unto which .will come with the first spring other birds of as sweet a song as those that remain in the garden, singing to the grim angel turning the flaming sword this way and that, and with each sweep of the blade reiterating the sorrowful word, “Nevermore 1"