‘THE LONELY ROAD.’

Hokitika Guardian, 17 July 1926, Page 1

‘THE LONELY ROAD.’

SWEET SINGER GOES TO REST. (Dunedin “Star”, July 12th.) Many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people would need only to hear the i punting refrain of the song entitled - ‘The Lonely Road’ in order to be i vividly reminded of the stall in the Australian Court at the Big Exhibition, 1 from which that song was sung and I sold. A great many of them, too, will remember one of the singers in par--1 ticular—a dark complexioned, comely ■ young lady, obviously possessing personality, whose strong, but sweet, voice imparted such' appealing emphasis to the sentiment of the refrain: The road seems long and lonely When your luck’s all upside down. You don’t meet smiling faces, Only just a gloomy frown. But when your star is rising Friends are not so hard to find; But you always leave the host ones On the lonely road behind. The many friends and aeqwiiutnnces whom this young singer made knew her as Nellie Dempster, a frank, goodhearted Englishwoman, who had come to Now Zealand with the party of demonstrators sent by the firm concerned in the sale of the songs, and who, looking the picture of health, enjoyed life as honest, healthy young people do enjoy it. Alas, just before the Exhibition closed, .she was taken with a strange illnesjp an illness which was not. at first considered at all serious, but which unfortunately developed in seriousness until. after a ten weeks’ plucky and exhausting light in the Stafford Hospital, death claimed her. Only thirty years I of age, and with so much of life before hc'r, the stricken songster quietly took the 1 lonely road just as the sun was breaking through the clouds early on Saturday afternoon last. 11l the words of the song which she had so often sung, her “hick was all upside down” when it decreed that she should died in a far country, away from her own folk, and in the prime of life ; and there wore doubtless times when tho road seemed long and lonely. But in tho period of her illness she was to find that the “gloomy frown” was not to bo her portion—that it was not only . when “your star is rising” that , friends are made and kept. A .few kind hearts (gathered around her in her need, and willing hands did all they possibly could to alleviate her . pain and distress. And these folk, while glad to have made her last Jays . as happy as was possible in the eirciim- | stances, are sad to have to realise that, willing and anxious as they were, neither heart nor hand could keep back the inevitable. To-day sonic of r those friends followed the remains of ‘ tho dead singer to its last resting place in the Anderson’s Bay Cemetery, and, as they visualised the grief-stricken " parents away in the Old Country just * in receipt of tho sad news, the words of another refrain which this girl had helped to make popular in those care- ' free Exhibition days came to mind: i True heart, don't sigh, though I am 11 far away; After tho night must come tho happy day. Dream on your dreams, and wait a little while; ? Your tearful eyes will learn again to smile.