WHEN EMMELINE'S "AI HOME"

Otago Witness, Issue 2813, 12 February 1908, Page 72

WHEN EMMELINE'S "AI HOME"

My Dear Readers, — Though we have enjoyed much good fellowship among the " Guild of Unknown Friends " this holiday season, it is quite a long time since my last " At' home " day — the day which for miscellaneous and desultory talk on all sorts of topics has taken the place of the old "Over the Teacups." In winter the Cosy Corner Club seems to absorb the personal interests of my active correspondents ; in spring and early 6ummer we are ready to foregather " By Garden Ways," so that few opportunities really present themselves for the miscellaneous chat of "At home" days; and, sad to say, the old " Chat on Books " gets completely crowded out. Like you — for I know quite well you've been doing it — I sowed the seed of quite a large crop of good resolutions for the New Year, and- if I can only manage to weed them and stir the ground between the rows when the little plants are just showing we shall have a real good time this gracious year of 1908. But I shall want you to help me. I always want you to help me. Everyone — man and woman alike — who tries to do something for other men and women needs the help of those other men and women to render their work successful. I won't say I want you to ask me for more advice and counsel than you do, for I cjuj 2^£ure you I fkid the questions you

' — «* do ask me sometimes — such as your letter, R. 8., and yours, White Clover — very difficult to answer. To be a sort of general intelligence officer is easy enough in a sense, but tp act as pilot between the Scylla and Charybdis of right and wrong in "strange seas — that is real responsibility. So real that I wonder sometimes if the correspondents who lay its burden so lightly on my shoulders (and they are not very wide ones!) realise what they ask of me. Of course, I know quite well, as every woman of the world must know, that in nine cas?s out of ten you don't take my advice unless it happens to run on all fours with what you had already unconsciously made up your mind to before you asked me ; but that does not alter my responsibility one atom.

No, it is not to be asked for more advice that I desire in the least ; it is to know how the advice succeeded — to hear if the tangled skein was wound smoothly in the end ; to know if the dangerous passage betweeen the Scylla and Charybdis of right and wrong was successfully negotiated ; to hear if that operation was successful ; if the infinitely hard struggle of duty against inclination proves easier with each day of conquest; if the young mother is happy, and the old and weary mother of the prodigal son has welcomed him home once more. Do you wonder, having asked my friendly counsel in the beginning of all these things, that I desire to know the ending? You all know the unsatisfied longing that follows the exciting or fascinating book you were not able to finish reading ; and' is not truth far stranger than any fiction, and real life more enthralling than the cleverest book ?

So you will sometimes remember that the impersonal Emmeline, with -whom your dearest confidences are as sacred as silence, yet is personal enough to take the keenest interest in " what happened next."

Just one other topic must suffice for to-day's chat, and you will almost guess j what it is. Women all over the world ! will have kind and sorrowful thoughts ! to spare for Queen Amelie of Portugal. -Only the other day the English illustrated journals and magazines were full of pictures of the royal guests whom the King and Queen delighted to honour, and among. them Queen Amelie's handsome face and gracious presence seemeji to embody all that makes one's instinctive ideal of a queen. Now the gay wedding guest is changed to the royal widow, deprived of her husband and her first-born, and with the awful horroi of that double murder blasting all her future, blotting out all her past.

And it was — within the circle of that home life and- affection which is the real life of queen and cottager alike — such a happy -past. Queen Amelie's marriage was as bright as the sunshine of mutual affection and congenial tastes could render it. Both she and her ill-fated husband were devoted to their two sons, both o£ whom gave promise of inheriting their mother's exceptionally sound and versatile talents. With such a strong and practical character as hers, there is no doubt Queen Amelie will, so far as a woman may, rise above the gloom of that double tragedy which has shattered her happiness, and devote herself to the high duties of Regent during Prince Manuel's minority. She is spoken of as possessing " wonderful energy and endurance, and a capacity for work possessed by few men." And she will need them. For one feels sure that the Queen will not allow either her new sorrows or her greatei duties to wean her from the special charities she has founded and fostered, as, for example, the dispensary and hospital for the children of the poor. In this pleasant refuge which the Queen not only founded, but maintains entirely at her own expense, the little patients are not only prescribed for, but nursed back to health with the nourishing diet impossible to the slender purses of their parents. When at home the Queen visits her children's .hopital every day, and likes nothing better than to remain there for an hour or two feeding, talking to, and waiting on the small patients, to whom she must surely seem the gracious embodiment of a fairy-tale princess. But Queen Amelie is keenly interested in the progress and improvement of all hospitals throughout her country, and gives the most practical aid towards the adoption of English methods of nursing and English management of hospitals and nursing institutions. On all sides, even from the very people who would benefit by innovations which they could not and would! not understand, Queen Amelie's plans met with opposition which would have effectually discouraged a less hopeful' and energetic temperament than hers. Moreover, many-sided as she is and numerous as her interests and hobbies have always been, nureing and hospital work is her favourite philanthropic work. W,hen the Rontgen. rays were first discovered many amusing stories were- told of the practical use which the Queen of Portugal made of them in combatting the absurdity of tight lacing. Most of the stories (like the jokes that are turned' out by professional humorists) were no doubt' fabrications, buti this much, isl true — • Queen Amelie had a Rontgen ray photograph of a tightly-laced lady successfully taken, and in its miserable revelation of internal deformity secured most practical