RAINBOW LANE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2596, 21 June 1923, Page 1

RAINBOW LANE.

New Zealand has often been referred to as “God’s Own Country,” but seldom, if ever before, as “Rainbow Land.” Such a reference was made by Bishop Cleary when responding to a public welcome at. Auckland last week. He prefaced his remarks with a quaint allusion to the old nurse of his childhood days, who, he sad, used to hold his attention with Irish fairy tales, one of which was about a little boy who chased rainbows. It was not for the love of the chase, said the Bishop, that he followed the fleeting colours, but for the crack of gold that —as all the world knows —was to be found by digging where the rainbow ended. And “the dickens of a word of a lie” was there in that for it was a truth told in parable, and not nil a fairy tale. Most of them, the Bishop continued, had chased their rainbow in this fair province and city of Auckland. He had dug into its religious life, and into its civic life, and, but in a lesser degree, into its social life. And he had found something infinitely more precious than crocks of gold. He had found hearts of gold, tlie kind hearts that are more than coronets —and souls of pearl and friendships more prized by him than the diamonds of the Rand. The priceless treasure he had gathered and stored in the storeroom of his heart, and there it. would remain, always and forever (reports the New Zealand Herald). It was with joy that he had returned to his “Rainbow Land.” He came back from the Valley of Death, and still was on the bi’ighter side of life —the side that looked towards the setting sun.