TRAMPS AND CHARITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 231, 29 September 1928, Page 10 (Supplement)

TRAMPS AND CHARITY.

FARM WIFE'S EXPERIENCE. GRATITUDE COMMON. THE DUTY OF GIVING.

(By H.Z.)

For many years of my early married j life I lived in what had been the home-1 stead of a large station. It was situated on the main road between a large agricultural and pastoral yea, and a flax milling and pastoral area. The men's quarters comprised a large dining room with big open fireplace, bunk rooms, kitchen with large colonial oven and bakehouse—where men on the tramp had been wont to call in search of food or work—so when the homestead had become the residence on a farm the custom still held, and we had tramps of every description call.

One day an irate maid came rushing to say she had given food to a man and he had thrown it at her. I went to investigate and found a very indignant man with food gathered up ready for my arrival. On examination 1 considered his anger, if not his way of expression, quite justified. He received more and departed after expressing his thanks. After that instructions were that I would interview tramps, and bo in this way I tame to see a good deal of what

"down and out" to many poor humans is.

The war did away with the man on the road to a great extent; but now it would seem that the unemployed must take to the roads if they are at all anxious to preserve their self-respect. I never could imagine why people would slam a door in the face of a man asking for bread. Of course there are many kinds of tramps and the older they get the more tactless they are and less fit for the company of normal folk.

Most men will do some little job while you are getting something for them. One who would always call at intervals between earning money and going to spend it at the nearest town, or on his return from town, sometimes even minus his swag, would always cut wood. He set a certain value on what he received. If it were lunch he would chop a barrow load of wood and bring it to the door. If a meal and a shakedown, one barrow load would be chopped and brought up, another chopped and left at the heap. Should he come for breakfast, another barrow load would be brought up to the door.

. One very stormy night, the kind of night that makes one think of ships at sea and be thankful one is on land with a roof over one and a comfortable fireside to sit beside, there was a knock at the door. On opening it, 1 was confronted by three poor drenched tramps. The rain was coming down in such torrents that I asked them in before I heard what they had to say. The reguI lar hands had finished their meal and gone to their quarters. I put food before my tramps, telling them to help themselves, as I was without a maid. When they had warmed themselves and finished their meal, they washed up and set the table as they had found it, ready for the men in the morning. When one has four or five men in the kitchen to feed, as well as a young family to attend to before a seven o'clock breakfast, it requires some management. The next day the torrential rain still continued to fall. After breakfast they did all the kitchen work for me, prepared the vegetables, waited on the regular hands at meal times, and when they had theirs, washed up and put away. The kitchen had a good spring clean that day.

Occasionally some poor fellow would ask for a day or more to rest, because his feet were so sore they needed attention. How some of the poor things manage to walk in the boots they wear 1 do not know. That alone were dire penance, I should think. When giving a man food, I usually offered him reading of some description, and it was usually gladly accepted. One poor, footsore old fellow who came early one summer afternoon, after receiving food, asked for grease to rub his boot 3 with. I offered him some papers to read as he sat in the sun. "Thank you, lady," he said. "I did not get any learning, and cannot read, but would be thankful if you would give me some pictures to look at." So I told my little boy to take his pictures,

cut from the illustrated papers, to him. There they sat for an hour or more looking at the pictures, and my boy reading the descriptions.

One man I had given a few days' work, when asked what name to put on his cheque, said: "Tom Brown; that will do. You see, missis, I have relatives and some nice nieces and nephews who go to high school, and I would not be wanting to be a disgrace to them. Tom Brown will do." One thing 1 found out through encouraging some of these poor men to chat, when they looked too wretched for anything, was that they could all look back and talk of their boyhood and their mother. When I hear people raving about tramps and calling them hard names, I wonder how much they

are to blame, and to my mind come the

words of the prophet: "I was young and now I am old, but never saw I yet the seed of the righteous begging their bread." So, friends, mothers and countrywomen, lay up this sure inheritance for your seed. To-day unemployment is rife. Of your charity give, even though many be undeserving, remembering: "The righteous God knoweth the hearts and trieth the reins."