NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 14 March 1918, Page 26

NOTES

Pagan Models for N.Z. The good Emperor Marcus Aurelius tells us in the beginning of his Meditations of the example of his parents : “By the recollection of my father’s character I learned to be both modest and manly. As for my mother she taught me to have regard for religion, to be generous and open-handed, and not only to forbear from doing anybody an ill turn, but not so much as to endure the thought of it. By her likewise I was bred to a plain, inexpensive way of living, very different from the common luxury of the rich.’’ We recall ar conversation with a respectable New Zealand gentleman who told us sadly that after all he had done for his only son there was not a man in the street who showed him less respect than that son. What that father said to us is the story of many a father in this country. We often wonder how many - hundred years it will be before the young people of New Zealand really begin to realise how little they know and how little they are worth knowing. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. And surely the beginning of the fear of God is reverence for parents —an unknown quantity almost in this new ~ country, s

Our Faults : ' : ' ; -- : y- " ...... ... ' To be modest; to have a regard for religion; to follow a plain, inexpensive way of living rather than the luxury of the rich— things the pagan Emperor learned from his pagan parents. What a long way so many of us have to travel before we can reach that pagan standard of civilisation ! God forgive them, our young people of both sexes, are as a rule very far from a knowledge of what modesty means at all. The self-denial of Marcus Aurelius is as foreign to them as dancing is to an elephant. A man who had spent half a lifetime in study and who rarely spoke without weighing his words once said to us that the assurance with which the young New Zealander was ready to take the floor and speak about a subject of which he knew nothing was a constant source of amusement to him. He said another thing too— a hard saying it was; “There would be some hope for them if they only realised that they are so ignorant.” All this goes to show how big a task is that of the parents. When they see their children being drawn into the common vortex of materialism they ought to weigh well the old, old wisdom of the Gospel : What will if avail a man ■if he ;fain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own son// Old Truths It is worth while turning over once in a while the pages of the little book which the good Emperor left us. If you ever go to Rome you will find on the heights of the Capitol, now called Piazza Campidoglio, a marvellous equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, and in a marvellous and symbolic setting. Behind him are the ruins of the Forum-broken arches, lonely columns, massive fragments of brickwork that the defacing hand of time has not wholly destroyed, and the flags of the Via Sacra along which so many splendid pageants passed in olden days. At his feet are some relics of the Rome of the stormy Middle Ages. In front of him, spread beneath his hand which is raised as if in blessing, is the Rome of the present day—the livest and most cosmopolitan city in the world. The Emperor himself marked the end of an old order and the beginning of a new. With his reign the dawn of civilisation became really evident and the darkness and savagery of paganism ended. The “good Emperor” was a modern. Even about his sayings there is a ring of reality and freshness found in we know not' what other ancient writer. Listen: “Do not forget that you are like the rest of the world, and faulty yourself in a great many instances : that it is sometimes a hard matter to be certain whether men do wrong, for their actions are often done with a reference to circumstances. Consider that our anger and impatience often prove more harmful than the things we are angry about; that gentleness is invincible provided that it is of the right stamp. If a thing is not seemly never do it; if it is not true never speak it.’’ Ave Atque Vale George Gissing laments the books that once so soothing and so comforting are read no more owing to oblivion or the shortness of time:—“l have but to muse and they rise before me. Books gentle and quieting ; books noble and inspiring ; books that well merit to be pored over not once but many times. Yet never again shall I hold them in my hand ; the years fly too quickly and are too few. Perhaps when I lie waiting for the end, some of these books will come into my wandering thoughts, and I shall remember them as friends to whom I owed a kindness—friends passed upon the way. What regret.in that last farewell!” So too one remembers often in moments of loneliness with a poignant sorrow the friends whom God has taken and whom one shall see no more on earth. Bright days that were spent in their company, acts of kindness that gave great pleasure once, remembered wqrds, keepsakes guarded jealously have now an atmosphere of sorrow attached to them. One by one the friends go out and leave us alone until the time comes when

we are truly alone - with God. - And then, - when are gone, we are nearest to finding all again. As time passes most readers will have made special friends of a few chosen books, and probably as: one prows older the books one,really values become fewer. So too with friends: many leave us at various stages of the journey, and the few who remain become dearer then. Yet the only friends we- never lose are those whom death calls away they never grow older, nor can we ever find a pretext for falling out with them: A ml the ; tall ships go on . To the haven under the hill. ; . ■, But, oh, fur the touch of a vanished, hand, 'S And the sound of a voire that is still. The Street of Adventure In London town there is a wonderful old street, whose very name has made many a boy’s pulse beat faster. Over it is a glamor surpassing in the eyes of youth that which hung round Hy Brasil. It has been the goal of many a high hope—and the grave. Fleet Street is still the street of adventure and of romance, but it is also the street of tears and misery. University men, with splendid records, have been hungry there; men with no records at all have thriven there. The street has a life of its own, and, beneath all the brave glamor of it, a seamy side that is cruelly disillusioning to most of those who enter. In literature and in journalism there is no royal road and very little luck. What one is or whence one comes does not matter greatly. What does matter is what one can do. If a boy or girl has the gift of writing which no schools can teach there is hope of success: without it there is no hope beyond the dreariness of hack work ; and for them who enter with no higher prospect than this it might have been written over the street: Laseiafe ogni speranxa, 0 voi ehe nitrate. There is many an Oxford scholar in the street who will never make anything of the profession. A navvy,boy whose education ended when his father took him in his twelfth year from a Donegal National School and hired him like a beast of burden to a dour Orange farmer was summoned from his pick and shovel and made much of. He walked straight to success because he had— a dirty slip of vagabond paperdemonstrated that the gift was his ; and his case no doubt added more false glamor to the name of Fleet Street. His fortune was exceptional. For one like him there are twenty who come in fairly educated, full of the courage of youth, jyithout means and without help, with nothing between them and starvation but steadfast courage and faith in their power to “make good.” The street has seen good men go under. Many a starving youth walked its pavements; many a wan face looked in at its windows. And who shall tell what brave letters were written home while hunger gnawed at the heart and the cold numbed the fingers that held the pen ! It will be always thus: a little success flaunting in front like a Will-o’-the-wisp, and a large crowd following the gleam that never comes nearer.