Along the Road.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20248, 17 July 1937, Page 15 (Supplement)

Along the Road.

AN OCCASIONAL COLUMN.

(By the Swagger.)

THE WILD WINTER has been blustering about the land, but not tonight. Everything outside is as still

as death, and there is going to be a heavy frost. I do not know if the fireside is as pleasant on nights like these as on nights when the wind is whipping round the corners of the building and the gale outside seems to make the peave within so very attractive. Perhaps not, but the fire is a great companion at any time. I have often tried to find a sound in nature like that of flames leaping from the burning logs, and the nearest I have ever got to It is the sound made when bed sheets hung on the clothes lines sometimes flap lazily in a breeze. Both have a soft sound, as if in some wonderful way muted. Given a fine day to-morrow, and that usually follows a frost, then there is Plenty of Work to be Done. The trees in the orchard must now be pruned, much dead wood cut out of shrubs and other things in the garden, hedges trimmed, and everything got ready, for the coming of spring. Do what one will there always seems to be a lot of dead branches about at this time of the year. It is a hopeless task to keep a place tidy, but the best must be done. Then the next wet day will see the lad and I busy inside the cowshed, preparing it for another season. Just at present the cows are up at the top place, so that the farm is not really muddy, despite the damp weather. And so we get ready for the return of spring. One day recently I stood on the doorstep of a friend’s house. Death had passed that way, and I had called just to see if there was anything I could do. Somehow I had never established what I call “touch” with the man who had passed on. We were friendly but he had a strong reserve and I can respect that. We passed the time of day, when we met, and talked *bout the ordinary things, but I never knew his thoughts, or found his enthusiasms. And his sister, with her eyes suspiciously bright, told me how he had been so considerate in the last few months, so thoughtful of her and her son. “I think,” she said, “that he was Preparing for the Other World.” It may be so. This life may be the time when we get ready. At any rate the poets thought so, and so did the orator who said that if there had been given to the cold heart of the buried acorn the eternal promise of another springtime then no less a promise would be given to the spirit of man. It is strange, at least I often think it so, that we sometimes meet people and never get to know them? We nod, perhaps daily, to one another, mention the weather, Possibly do some work together, but never

really get to know each other. There is that wall which each builds, and behind it we live our lives. Sometimes, in danger or stress, we catch a glimpse of what lies beyond, but it is quickly hidden. I am never surprised when reading the life of any great person to find that he showed to the world a bold front, or used a sharp tongue, or a strange shyness, and that this was the Wall Behind Which He Lived. The real man probably was gentle and sensitive, but few, very few, ever entered into that inner life. We all do it, and I suppose it cannot be helped, but it must mean the loss of a great deal, if only of friendly companionship. I like that description of a friend as being one in whose company a man can think aloud. That means that the barriers are down, and that there is no fear of not being understood. People who have reached that stage have enriched life immensely. “I have called you friends.” That must have been a great moment for those simple folk, to be called His friend, and it counts in life to know that one has a friend. It was Stevenson, I think, who said that no man was useless while he had a friend. As usual I have digressed. I had intended to write about the joy of the winter fireside, and of a splendid picture I saw in the glowing embers, but it does not matter. I think what started me off on _ the other line was a letter lying on the little table which begins “Dear Friend.” The truth of the matter is that I do not know the writer, but to be Called Friend by a Stranger is a pleasure. It shows that we are strangers only in a physical sense. We have some mutual appreciations, and probably if we should ever meet could chat away without any feeling of strangeness. That was what the American meant when he wrote: Thanks for the sympathies ye have shown. Thanks for each kindly word, each silent token, Which teaches me, when seeming most alone, Friends are around us though no word Be spoken. I like the last line. The sense of friendship is not easily lost. Time and distance make no difference to it; they do not cause grief. The day may come when we shall again meet and resume the old relationship as though there had been no break. And, if that is not fy) be, then wherever we may be we know we have a friend, bound strongly to us by unseen ties. In such circumstances life is good, and it may be that beyond we shall “spend in pure converse our eternal day.”