The Family Circle

New Zealand Tablet, 19 October 1916, Page 61

The Family Circle

SUMMER SUN. Great is the sun, and wide lie goes Through, empty heavens without repose; And in the blue and glowing days More thick than rain he showers his rays. Though closer still the blinds we pull To keep the shady parlor cool, Yet he will find a chink or two To slip his golden fingers through. The dusty attic spider-clad He, through the keyhole, maketh glad; And through the broken edge of tiles, Into the laddered hayloft smiles. Meantime his golden face around He bares to all the garden ground, And sheds a warm and glittering look Among the ivy's inmost nook. Above the hills, along the blue, Round the bright air with footing true, To please the child, to paint the rose, The gardener of the world, he goes. —Robert Louis Stevenson. BY-WAYS. ' How I shall miss what I have enjoyed in this big city, when I go back to my little village,' sighed Dora. The young girl had lately finished her high school course, and before taking up her home-life as mother's helper, she had had a visit with a family friend in a large city. ' I am sorry to have you go,' said the hostess, ' but I hope you won't take such a sorry face home with-you as you wear this minute. What is back of it, Dora? Tell me, please.' 'I think you will understand,' said the girl, wistfully. ' This great city seems so full of everything. It is like being in a broad place, where one can see far off, and reach out. The little home village is such a narrow place. What chance is there to know things and to do things, in a little cooped-up bit of a town like that? It is as different from this, as the wide paved streets here are different from the little straggling lanes that we use so much in going about.' 'Dear girl,' said the older friend, 'you do not dream how many who go along these highways long for the village _ by-ways, so quiet and restful, and apart from the stir and turmoil, felt to be so wearing to body and spirit. But no matter as to that. Your life at present belongs to the byways, and 1 urge you to take the joys that belong to you there.' ' How shall I find them V n * Take my word for it, these paths which are to be the only ones for your feet just now are bordered with such 'little joys and duties, privileges and opportunities, as make them blossoming byways. Look for the flowers and the wholesome herbs, and you will find them at your feet. Gather them, and you can make every day beautiful and savory, too, with what you find close to you.' A look of faint understanding struggled into Dora's expression. ' You think the common every day of life before you looks tiresome and monotonous, but it will be neither if you go open-eyed and observant, and take the sweet little joys that bloom in quiet paths where there is room for them. Don's pass them by, or step on them,' and the speaker smiled into the girl's responsive face. TURNING THE TABLES. 'I presume, my good fellow, you're a laborer said a loud-voiced lawyer to a plainly-dressed witness.

' You are right; I am a workman, sir,' replied the witness, who was a civil engineer. ' Familiar with the use of the pick, shovel, and spade, I presume ?' 'To some extent. Those are not the principal implements of my trade, though.' ' Perhaps you will condescend to enlighten me as to your principal implements.' 'lt is hardly worth while. You don't understand their nature or use.' 'Probably —loftily—'but I insist on knowing what they are.' Brains MECCA. Mecca, where Arabian independence was proclaimed, was a famous and prosperous city many centuries before it became the metropolis of Islam. The Makoraba of Ptolemy and the capital of the Hedjoz, it has been a notable trading centre since very early times, and the famous Ka'aba, originally a heathen shrine containing a miraculous fetish, attracted pagan pilgrims long before Mahomet made it the holiest shrine of the Moslem world. Except for the great Mosque and a few minor buildings, most of Mecca has been rebuilt in modern times. As well die a Jew or a Christian as not make the pilgrimage to Mecca, said Mahomet: and no obligation of Islam is more piously discharged. It is believed that the ritual connected with the visit to the Ka'aba the square building —and the kissing of the Black Stone go back to days of idolatry, the ' time of ignorance' before the new faith bloomed. The Black Stone, which measures about six inches by eight, is believed to have fallen from Paradise, to have been guarded during the Deluge, and handed to Abraham by Gabriel when the Ka'aba was built, Certain parts of the ceremonial—the throwing of stones at the Devil, and the imitation of Hagar's distracted wanderings in the desert, are supposed to have had 'significance for the pre-Mohammedan times as well as for Islam. AND HE DIDN'T DO IT AGAIN. A gentleman, while walking with two ladies through one of the principal streets of London, saw a beggar approach. One of the ladies, who had evidently seen the mendicant before, said: ' This is the most singular man I ever heard of. No matter how much money you give him, he always returns the change, and never keeps more than a penny.' ' Why, what a fool he must be,' remarked the gentleman. ' But I'll try him, and put him to a little trouble.' So saying, the gentleman pulled from his pocket a sovereign, which he dropped into the beggar's hat. The mendicant turned the coin over two or three times, examined it closely, and then, raising his eyes to the countenance of the benevolent man, said : ' Well, I'll not adhere to my usual custom in this case. I'll keep it all for luck; but don't do it again.' The donor opened his eyes in astonishment and passed on, while the ladies smiled with delight. ' COULD NOT CHANGE. ' Well, little chap,' said the stranger in the family, picking up one of the children, ' what are you going to be when you're a man?' ' Nuffin',' said the child. ' Nothing? Why so?' asked the stranger. ' Because,' said the child, ' I'm a little girl.' v QUITE SATISFIED. ' Let me see some of your black kid gloves,' said a lady to a draper's assistant. ' These are not the latest, style, are they?' she asked, when the gloves .were produced. „".•'.. , r

Yes, madam,' replied the man; 'we have had them in stock only two days.' ... - 'I didn't think they were the fashion-paper says black kids have tan stitches, and vice-versa. I see the tan stitches, but not the vice-versa.' The assistant explained that vice-versa was French for seven buttons, so she bought three pairs. PELISSIER'S WIT. The late 11. G. Pelissier was in the habit of declaring that, taking it all round, his voice got him into a lot of trouble. ' For instance,' he would say, ' I remember on one occasion being left alone in the house with a brace of canaries belonging to my sister, of which she was very fond. "Now," thought I, "I can at last be certain of a really appreciative audience. I will sing to them." So I sang to them and my sister never forgave me the loss of her canaries. It was the only authentic case I ever met with of "Killing two birds with one's tone." ' ROUGH ON THE TEAM CONDUCTOR. When the tram-car conductor on the night turn woke up one afternoon his industrious little wife brought out for his admiration a lamp-shade made of colored tissue paper. She had made it with her own hands, and its scalloped border was perforated with innumerable little holes, through which the light of a parlor lamp would fall on the table. ' Tell me if you don't think it pretty,' she said, holding the shade out for the husband to inspect. at it more closely he turned pale, and said, ' You made these holes with my bell-punch?' ' Yes, dear, while you were asleep. But what is the matter asked his wife. 'Oh, nothing,' he murmured, faintly; 'you've only rung up enough fares on that lamp-shade to mortgage my year's salary. Every one of those holes will cost me threepence, that's all.' THE GOOD OLD DAYS. We twentieth century people boast of our smartness. This is called the steel age. We claim to make good steel, yet the blades of Saracens turned out hundreds of years ago would cut one of our own blades in two like butter. Our modern ink fades in five or ten years to rust color, yet the ink of medieval manuscripts is as black and bright to-day as it was 700 years ago. The beautiful blues and reds and preens of antique Oriental rugs have all been lost, while in Egyptian tombs we fine fabrics dyed thousands of years ago that remain to-day brighter and purer in hue than any of our modern fabrics. We can't build as the ancients did. The secret of their mortar and cement is lost to us. Their mortar and cement were actually harder and more durable than the stones which they bound together. THE HUMORS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. A temperance orator, in the midst of a moving discourse, deplored the fact that a friend resorted to the frequent use of the daily glass. The speaker said, ' I stand prostrate with astonishment.' Yet another feelingly told his audience that it was ' not the platform speaker, but the house-to-house visitation and the utterance of the silent word by the caller which did the most good.' That was a flight of fancy when a speaker asked : ' Suppose if a balloon dropped upon an uninhabited island, what would the natives say?' An old gentleman, stumbling through an afterdinner speech, said: ' II- have no more to say, and so—and so— l'll make a few more remarks.'

Kind was the announcement that ' there will be" two more opportunities to hear the lecturer once more.' It was when the meeting ended that the chairman asked the audience to ' close by singing just one verse of the doxology.' MAKING SURE OF THE COLLECTION. . "jg^ A troupe of wandering musicians were playing be- ;v fore a Swiss hotel. At the 1 end of the performance one. of the members left the group, approached the leader of the band, and pulled out a little paper box, which he emptied into his left hand, while the eyes of the leader followed every movement. He then took a plate in his right hand, passed it round, and a large sum was collected, everyone meanwhile wondering what he held in his left hand. Why, it's very simple,' said the leader, when questioned. J We are all subject to temptation, and, to be sure of the fidelity of our collector, he has to hold five flies in his left hand, and we count these first when he returns to make sure of the money.' CAUSED A SENSATION. Miss Jeanette L. Gilder, whose death was reported a short time ago, could recall some strange experiences in her early journalistic career. Her first post was on the staff of a morning paper in Newark, New Jersey, whose editor was a close friend of the editor of an evening paper published in the same town. One afternoon Miss Gilder's chief, calling at the office of the other, playfully rallied him on the lack of ' ginger ' in his editorials. ' You are too mild,' he said. ' Why don't you go for me, for instance, in this style? Take your pencil, and I will show you how to do it.' The victim of the exhortation took up his pencil and wrote this at his friend's dictation—' The editor of our esteemed morning contemporary is drawing money under false pretences. His employers—poor blind fools—take him to be a sober, industrious man. He is neither sober nor industrious. Most of his time is spent in bar-rooms while his subordinates do the work. If it were not for a certain brilliant young lady on his staff who writes his editorials when he is incapable of doing so, his incapacity would long since have been discovered.' There now,' continued the editor, of that morning paper, rising from his chair, ' that's the way to do it. Dip your pen in ginger—anyone can use ink.' Thereupon the two friends linked arms and sauntered over to the nearest saloon. Presently the foreman printer of the evening paper looked in eager for" copy. He was in the habit of searching his editor's desk for it in his absence, and this time he found some manuscript in the familiar handwriting right on the top of the blotting-pad. He picked" it up without reading it, and passed it on to a compositor. A few minutes later it was in type, and a few minutes more it was off the press. There was, of course, a huge sensation 4