NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 15, 19 April 1923, Page 30

NOTES

A Poem from "Punch" ; Allowing for the fact that so much ignorance of the fact that most Irish nuns speak far better English than is spoken in London or Yorkshire, the following poem from Punch has its appeal: Sister Therese. Though your name be French and those radiant eyes Bring me a vision of Southern skies, ■ Yet the "sorra a bit"\kind the "if ye plaze" Tell me your fatherland\Sister Therese. You sit in the shade of a convent wall, Where the big white lilies bloom shoulder-tall, A picture of purity, love, and light, A work of the Master in black and white. And rounds you the little brown orphans run, Bare-legged, bob-curled sprites of fun, , Who reck not of tragedy, fear no fear, So long as they know you are somewhere near. Though gate-ways threaten and walls divide, , The things we do in the world outside, . The latest fashion} the newest craze, Are all of them known to you, Sister Therese. And to hear you talk one would never guess That your lite was a battle of saintly stress, For, whatever the topic, you flavor it With the'spice of your humor, the. salt of your wit. Nowhere do flowers seem quite so sweet As they do in this quaint old-world retreat, Where the trees rain gold on an. emerald .sward, And a little white statue keeps watch and ward. But I, who have felt the power of your spell, And learned the grace of you, know full well That it isn't a flower or a carved device Which makes of your garden this Paradise. ' -J. M. S.

Big Words ..It requires much patience, as every teacher of English who knows English recognises, to persuade some people that the best English style is built up on little old-fashioned words. To the Bible, the treasure house of Saxon speech, such writers of pure English as John Morley went for refreshment. There is however a class of persons who cannot be convinced that there is either merit or distinction in a page which is not weighted by sesquipedalian boulders derived from, the Latin or the Greek. A man who has had a classical education may wield the monsters without hurting himself, but disaster is sure to attend the steps of the man who has no Latin and less Greek. A magnate who had made-millions-by making sausages was once entertained at a banquet on his return from a grand tour on the Continent. In a speech which is best described as characteristic he extended himself on his impression of his travels: "I ; shall not easily forget," he said, "the pleasant mornings by the sunny shores of Lake Leman, mv delight in the scenery around the lovely Lake of Geneva.'.' Unfortunately his neighbor was a schoolmaster: "But surely, sir, you know that LakS Leman and the Lake Geneva are synonymous.

"I am quite aware of the fact, but I think Leman by far the more synonymous of the two," replied the unabashed son of Mammon. At a a village concert the village butcher sang so successfully "that encore followed encore. "My goodness,"- exclaimed the vicar's lady,'what an . extensive repertoire he has." "Well I should hot like to say that," said the' village tailor, "but he certainly is .getting very stout." We once knew an Irish District Councillor who baffled the board by suggesting that the fence of a new laborer's cottage should be built on "the hip o' the news." At last a pencil and paper were thrust into his hands with an entreaty to describe what he wanted by a sketoh. ' He drew a right-angled triangle and indicated the longest side which some members then remembered used to be called the hypothen used in their long forgotten school books.

Katharine Tynan Again ' \ • The-irrepressible Katharine has brought out another volume of reminiscences. We do not know whether readers will weep or laugh to hear this. Most of them, perhaps, will shrug their shoulders and say: "More snob stuff!" The latest Tynan book is catled The Wandering Yean. It is a wandering sort of thing, too. It is vague and snatchy and has all the notes of a pot-boiler. She drags in many famous names and gives little or no information worth having about them. In her previously published volumes of reminiscences Katharine revealed herself as the quintessence of a concentrated snob. She still runs true to form and there is abundant piffle about her visits to great houses in England and Scotland. If the dear lady had an ounce of common sense she would have recognised long ago that nobody cares two straws whether she dines in a sixpenny foodshop in London or eats plover's eggs and bisque soup with Lord de Vere in Castle Vere. But she is condemned to see with the eye of a snob and 'to think with the brain of a snob, for the curse of snobbery has fallen heavy on her for ceasing to be a clear-eyed Irishwoman who might have done good work but that she reached out her greedy little paw for the ess of potage.

Katharine Still It is a coincidence that just as we were about • writing the foregoing note we came upon a paper called The Teachers' World, on the front page of which was . a feature styled "Talks With Famous Writers." And lo and behold you ! the sub-caption for the week was "Katharine Tynan." Well, it will be some salt in her egg to know that' there is somebody who pretends to regard her as famous. We read a wee bit of the article, and we were not surprised to find in it a revelation of, the same old self-important, conceited, snobbish Katharine. Here is what she saidat least here is the part of her remarks that tickled us: "I was at school at«a very old-fashioned «.convent school, Siena Convent, Drogheda, Co. Louth. I don't know that I learnt much beyond certain lessons of refinement and spirituality. . . I do not think the nuns in my school had any special educational qualifications. • There are excellent musicians among them and very clever and capable women, a good deal handicapped doubtless by the ban on newspapers and magazines, and all but the most carefully censured books. . . I may say that I was an intractable pupil, obstinately refusing to learn anything that did not interest me. . •';.'■ I always took refuge in tears when asked to learn anything I did not like, which I found efficacious, as the nuns were particularly careful of my .eyes which were very delicate." "\ • We are quite certain that she learned little or nothing. Probably had the kind - nuns not • been deceived by her hypocrisy and had they applied the cane, ' and even boxed her ears, Miss - Katharine would have been a more admirable person to-day. For our part, we are inclined to think that least of all did she learnthe lessons of refinement and spirituality which she would have us believe were about all she did learn from the clever and capable women who rightly objected to

the divorce cases in the dailies, and the muck of literature for" which Katharine apparently thirsted. A woman of her age who suggests magazines and newspapers and uncensored books in a convent school ought to lose no time in submitting to an . expert her head in order that he might read it professionally. Loid Dunsany tells us that he attributes his beautiful style to the fact that his mother would not ‘let him read newspapers and kept him at the Bible. Katharine has not brains enough to understand that. ,