Thoughtful Moments

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 100, 4 September 1942, Page 2

Thoughtful Moments

IT HAPPENED IN 1878, BUT Ifc WELL -WORTH RECORDING IN 1942 'I ho recent death of Mr Julius Kruttsehnitt, lor many years chairman of the Executive Committee of the Southern Pacific Railway, U.S.A. called out a remarkable tribute from the pen of Mr E. S. Glascock, whirh appeared in the Manufacturers' Record, of Baltimore. "By way of preface to Mr Glascock's account of an ine'dent in Mr Kruttsehnitt s youthful days Avhich was known to only a few of iriends, i I may be said that ye/.loav fever epidemics in the South fifty ] years ago inspired a terror which • we of to-day can only faintly ap- i preciate," remarks the American Review of Reviews of Mr Glascock's story which follows: — "'ln 1878 Julius Kruttsehnitt left ] McDonough School, near Baltimore', and accepted a position Avith Mor- ; gan's Louisiana and Texas Railway < and Steamship Co. He reported for duty at New Orleans and was put. in * ? charge of a small surveying party. 1 The work to be done was distant 1 from the city in a sparsely inhabit- ' ed district hardly more than a swampy wilder n ess,.

OUR SUNDAY MESSAGE

o i» \\ llUli 11 trad;. """Ihe parly had been at work bu a short while when one of the chain H men was brought down willi yeilou S fever. Every man iii Kruttschnitt': H squad fled for his life. H "'Think for a moment of the siL |j uation in which Kruttschnitt lounc = himse t !f. Young—he was in his ear|j ly twenties—brilliant, conscious ol |j his powers and of his worth to the S world, with ten years of arduous | preparation behind him, and, seethH ing with the confident ambition of | strong, capable.youth, must he throw E ■ £, H t.his in the scale to ease the suf- | fering and, tend the wanis of a man | who in all human probability must | die, and who could be fully replac- | ed by any one of''thousands of, his = kind? The cold light of analytical reason finds but little excuse for the course he took. But, thank God! the cold light of analytical reason is not the only light to guide us. and the light that shone in Krutt- J s?hnit.t's soul was a far brighter and. purer one. '"He stayed with his man. To • obtain necessaries he erected a board over a rising bit of ground some distance from his camp, and wrote on it what he needed from day to day. Having attracted attention to it, he was furnished with whatever

lt IF I CAN LIVE li\ \S If I can "live •- To make some pale face brighter, d and to give •- A second lustre to some t ear-dim-I med eye, e Or e'en impart. s One throb of comfort to an aching heart, f Or cheer some way-worn soul in passing by. - If 1 can J end 1 A strong hand to the fallen, or det fend. - The right against a single envious i strain, My life, though bare Perhaps of much that secmeth dear and fair, To us of earth, will not. have befcn in vain. The finest joy, Most near to heaven, far from earth's alloy, Ts bidding cloud give way to sun and shine; And. 'twill be well If on that day of days the angels tell I Of nr;, "He did his best for one of Thine."

(Supplied by ihe Whakatane Minis! ers' Association).

could be obtained. Tile supplieswere p'aeed on the hill, and he brought them in. Weeks of this, alone with a delirious man. " 'The man died. Yet Kruttsclmitt thought his duty not completed. He made his requisition on the boar.i now warped and weather-beaten by rain and sun, for a collin, a Bible and a spade. " 'He read the funeral service over A the grave and filled it. Then, no jot or tittle left for him to do, he went home and to bed with yellow fever., "'Julius Kruttsehnitt did much that was of great material service to the world. That of which we have spoken was of practically none ■ —water for one parched mouth that otherwise had; none —a comforting sense to one poor, ignorant, dying soul that lie should not die alone, and a decent respect .shown to his remains. "'Yet in the fact that man is cap able of such things vies, the hope of the world. " 'As an engineer and' executive Mr Kruttsehnitt, in later years rose to one of the highest positions in the railroad, world," concludes the American Review of Reviews. j G T