MADE GENTLE UNCONSCIOUSLY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 26, 27 June 1891, Page 105

MADE GENTLE UNCONSCIOUSLY.

A workmax in a pottery factory had one small invalid' child at home. He wrought at his trade with exemplaryfidelity, being always in the shop with the opening of the day. Every night he carried to the bedside of his ‘ wee lad,’ as he called him, a Hower, a bit of ribbon or a fragment of crimson glass, something that would lie out on the white counterpane and give colour to the room. He was a quiet, unsentimental man, and said nothing to anyone about his affection for his boy. He simply went on loving him, and soon the whole shop was brought into halfconscious fellowship with him. The workmen made curious little jars and cups, and painted diminutive pictures upon their sides before they stuck them in the corners of the kiln at burning time. One brought some fruit and another a few engravings on a rude scrapbook. Not one of them whispered a word; this solemn thing was not to be talked about. They put the gifts in the old man's hat, where he found them ; he understood all about it. Little by little all the men, of lather coarse fibre by nature, grew gentle and kind, and some dropped swearing as the weary look on their patient fellowworker’s face told them beyond mistake that the inevitable shadow was drawing nearer. Every day some one did a piece of work for him and put it on the sanded bank to dry, so that he might come later and go earlier. So when the bell tolled and the little coffin came out of the lonely door, a hundred stalwart working-men from the pottery, all in their clean clothes, stood just round the corner. Most of them had given a half day’s time for the privilege of following to the grave that small burden of a child, though probably not one of them had ever seen him.