The Family Circle

New Zealand Tablet, 7 December 1916, Page 61

The Family Circle

TACKLE YOUR TROUBLE. Should life’s storms be blowing gusty, or the road be hot and dusty, Don’t give up and pull a face all glum and blue ; Cheer up, man, and tackle trouble ! If your efforts you redouble ' There’ll be brighter days ahead awaiting you ! Where’s the use of whining, moaning, or of wasting time in droning ? Never yet have such things pulled a fellow through ! When you’ve trouble you must meet it, that’s the proper way to treat it ! Always bear in mind ‘ results ’ depend on ‘ you’ ! Never heed the whiner’s chatter, ’tis right deeds and acts that matter, That will pierce the clouds—the roughest pathway span. Every trouble is made lighter, and you’ll find your outlook brighter, If you tackle things and face them like a man. If you mean to conquer trouble you must take it 1 at the double,’ You must act the man and face the matter out : Tackle trouble, gamely fight it ! shirking it will never right it ! Face it bravely, and vour trouble you will rout.

THE CRICKET AND THE 1,1 ON

One day the lion was out walking in the woods. As he was stepping near an old rotten log, he heard a, tiny voice say: ‘ Oh. please don’t step there. That’s my house, and with one step more you will destroy it.’

The lion looked down and saw a little cricket sitting on a log. He roared: ' And it is you, weak little creature, that dares tell me where to step? Don’t you know I am the king of beasts?’

4 You may be the king of beasts, but 1 am the king of my house: and I don’t want you to break it down, king or no king.’

The lion was amazed at such daring

4 Don’t you know, you little weakling, that I could smash you and your little house and all your relatives with one blow of my paw?’

‘ I may be weak, but I have a cousin no bigger than I who can master you in a fight.’

‘Oho! O! O!’ laughed the lion. Well, little boaster, you have that cousin here to-morrow and if he does not master me I’ll crush you and your house and your cousin altogether.’ The next day the lion came back to the same spot and roared : ‘ Now, boaster, bring on your valiant cousin !’

Pretty soon he heard a buzzing near his ear. Then he felt a stinging. ‘Oh, O!’ he cried, ‘ Get out of my ear!

But the cricket’s cousin, the mosquito, kept on singing and stinging. With every sting the lion roared louder and scratched his ear and jumped around. But .the mosquito kept on singing and stinging. The cricket sat on the log and looked on. At last he said : ‘Mr. Lion, are you satisfied to leave my house alone V ‘Yes, anything, anything,’ roared the lion, ‘if you will only get your cousin out of my ear!’ So the cricket called the mosquito off, and then the lion went away and never bothered them any more.

TOOK THEM FOR DESERTERS. A British soldier went into a grocery establishment to buy some articles. Seeing some red herrings lying on the counter, he asked what they were.

‘ Soldiers, my friend,’ said the grocer, winking at the company. ‘ Are they?’ rejoined the son of Mars. ‘ Then I’ll take them as deserters,’ and off he walked with his prisoners, to the discomfiture of the witty grocer and amusement of the bystanders.

SHOULD HAVE LOOKED OLDER. Artist (to parvenu): There you are, sir Is I’ve painted you a full line of ancestors, and I’ll warrant you that none will know they are not genuine. This is your father, that your grandfather, this your greatgrandfather, and ’ Parvenu: ‘Hold on! Good heavens, man! you’ve made by great-grandfather a much younger-looking man than I am !’

THAT PUDDING. Mr. Brewster thought his front door looked as if a coat of varnish would do it no harm, and resolved to do it himself to save the expense of a painter. Finding an old golden-syrup tin in the yard, he qjent off to the shop for some ‘ best oak varnish.’ He placed it in the pantry for the night, and was up early next morning, and by half-past twelve had got the door finished. ‘ I don’t like it now it’s done,’ he said to his wife. ‘ It’s bad varnish,’ replied she ‘ he’s sold you the wrong sort of stuff.’ lie thought so too, and went to the shop; taking what was left with him. ‘This is funny stuff you sold me,’ said he; ‘it’s dull and sticky.’ After examining it, the shopman said: This is not what I sold you. This is treacle It then dawned on Mr. B. that he had got hold of the wrong tin, and he went back home to explain to his wife. ‘ Good gracious, James !’ she exclaimed. ‘ And I’ve made a pudding with the other tinful

GERMANY’S WOMAN ARMY. ' Germany’s Woman Army,’ the thousands of women who since the war have taken men’s places on the railways, in the postal service, on the tramways, as street cleaners, night-watchwomen, and so forth, is the subject of a long inquiry in the Vossische Zeitung. ‘ Women as night watchers,’ says the report, ‘have in not a few cases contributed greatly to the public security. What they could not accomplish by muscular strength, they have achieved by woman’s wit. In Lichtenburg a night-watch woman secured the arrest of two burglars. Another waited until three burglar’s had packed their loot into a motor car, and then jumped on the footboard as the car was driving off ; the burglars were so alarmed that they jumped out of the car, and left it and the booty to the watch woman.’

THE BOY SCORED. A small boy astride of a donkey was taking some supplies to an army camp in Texas not long ago, and got there just as a detachment of soldiers, preceded by a baud, was marching past. The lad dismounted and held the bridle of the donkey tightly in his hand. ‘ Why are you holding on to your brother so hard ?’ asked one of a group of soldiers who were standing near and wanted to tease the country boy.

TIE KNEW. A schoolmaster in a rural council school was recently giving a lesson to the lowest standards on the formation of rain by the process of evaporation, ‘ You will notice,’ said he, ‘ that during the evening following a hot summer day something rises from the surface of the ponds. What is it?’ . ! '

One solitary hand gradually creeps up?’ ‘ Good boy. I can see you are thinking. What is it?’ Good Boy : Frogs.’

TWO OE ’EM. A man who had just finished a comfortable meal at a restaurant the other evening suddenly rose from his chair, caught up his hat and an umbrella that stood against the Avail, and rushed out. of the building. ‘ Stop him 1’ exclaimed the proprietor. ‘ That fellow went out without paying.’ ‘ I’ll stop him,’ said a determined-looking man, who rose up hastily from a table near where the other had sat. He took my gold-headed umbrella. I’ll stop him, and I’ll bring him back in charge of a police officer, the scoundrel !’

Without a moment’s pause, he dashed out of the house in hot pursuit of the conscienceless villain. And the proprietor, a cold, hard, unsympathetic kind of man, has somehow begun to suspect that neither of them will ever come back.

A GREAT SPANISH PAINTER. *c Romantic, if perhaps in the main invention, is the story which attaches to the early days of Diego de Silva Velasquez, who was born at Seville on June 6, 1599. Velasquez, whose surname is taken from that of his mother—a common custom in Spain —was destined by his family, which was of noble origin, lor one of the learned professions. But the boy was wholly devoted to art from his earliest days, and he longed in vain to take it up as a profession. The story of how he came to do so is told in Spain as one of romance.

At that time there was a school of painting at Seville, taught by the elder Herrera, and many pupils gathered round him. None of them proved to have any outstanding talent for their work, until suddenly it began to be noticed that now and then some work was executed in the studio which exceeded in perfection any that the master himself could attain to. When and by whom the work was done was long a mystery, for it was usually carried out when no one was present. At length it was determined to set a watch, by day and night to see who was the culprit artist, and at last a little boy was caught hard at work on a canvas late in the evening when the school had been closed for the

night. How he had effected an entrance was unknown, but probably through some window left open. It is said that the master was called, and with several of his pupils watched with breathless admiration from behind their cover how' the work was done. He was seen to be using the brushes of Herrera himself, whose peculiarity it was to have long bristles to bis brushes when working, and the colors seemed to float on to the canvas as the boy breathed life into his work. From then on Velasquez was given a free hand, and was placed under the care of the best teachers. But he himself far exceeded any of them, and is now regarded as one of the mightiest painters the world has ever seen. His human beings and animals seem actually to breathe as one watches them, and Ruskin says of him that ‘whatever he did may lie taken as absolutely right by the student.’

HIS IDLE CURIOSITY. Charity Patient ; 1 Doctor, is there any clanger that the operation will prove fatal?’ Doctor: ‘.Really, my good man, considering that we are experimenting on you free of charge, your idle curiosity smacks of insolence 1’

THE SILVER LINING. Not long ago a clergyman, in the course of ministrations among the poor of a large provincial town,

called on an old lady who had been bedridden for some years.

‘ Well, Mrs. Davies,’ he said, ‘ and how are you to-day ?

‘ Oh, I’m pretty well, thank you,’ was the cheerful answer j

‘ Ah, that’s right,’ responded the clergyman, sympathetically. ‘ I hardly expected to find you to be in such good spirits, considering your affliction. I was afraid I should find you downhearted.’

'(No, no, sir!’ she cried, interrupting him. ‘No, no, indeed, sir. I’ve much to be thankful for, I have. Why, only the other night, when that house just opposite was on fire, I couldn’t help thinking of all the poor people crushing each other in the street, and many of them not getting a sight of the fire at all, while here was I, all nice and comfortable in bed, and I could see it beautifully through my window without even turning over ! Oh, no, I’ve a lot to be thankful for.’

SHE HAD SOME EXPERIENCE. Aviator (home from the war on leave) : ‘ And then when you are up pretty highthree or four miles, say —and you look down, it’s positively sickening. It is stupendous, awful. A great height is a fearful thing, I can tell you.’

Lady (feelingly) : ‘ Yes, I can sympathise with you, poor boy. I feel just that way myself when I’m on top of a step-ladder.’

HIS TAKING WAYS. Not long ago the editor of an English paper ordered a story of a certain length, but when the story arrived he discovered that the author had written several hundred words too many. The paper was already late in going to press, so there was no alternative—the story must be condensed to fit the allotted space. Therefore the last few paragraphs were cut down to a single sentence. It read thus:

: The earl took a Scotch whisky, his hat, his departure, no notice of his pursuers, a revolver out of his hip-pocket, and, finally, his life.’

A CLEVER RETORT. A snappy little story is going the round just now. It concerns an Englishman and an American travelling in the same railway carriage. The Englishman had handed a newspaper containing the latest news of the great offensive to the American, who read the paragraphs and returned the paper. ‘ Some fight!’ said he.

And some don’t,’ replied the Englishman

THE JOB HE WOULD CHOOSE. ‘ I wonder,’ remarked Mrs. Brown, as she put down her paper, ‘ what they’ll do with the Kaiser when the war’s over? I suppose they’ll take his crown away, and make him look for another job.’ ‘ Perhaps,’ agreed Brown : ‘ and I rather fancy I know the job he’ll choose.’ ‘ What’s that?’ ‘A diver’s.’ ‘Why?’ asked Mrs. Brown. So that he can inspect his fleet now and again.’