KINKS IN KINDNESS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 201, 18 August 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

KINKS IN KINDNESS.

SHOWING WHAT A PARSON GETS IN RETURN FOR KINDNESS. When I was young one of the headings in my copybook was "Kindness is its own reward." Painfully true. Not, mark you, that T mind being kind and getting never a "Thank you!" I'm used to that! It's when one is penalised for being kind that, in my humble opinion, it's time to be unkind. Willie Jones was a choir boy, and he came to a choir practice wet through I was kind to tne kid. Lent him my overcoat; turned the sleeves back, and told him not to drag the tail in the mud. Told him, too -more kindness—to tell his mother to keep the overcoat, as I should be down her way during tho week. (She lived two miles away.) I went, and expected Mrs. Jones to say how kind I was. and that of all the parsons she had ever known, or heard of, or read about, I took the kindness cake. But she didn't. What she said was. "Thank you for that old overcoat, sir. .lones wanted it, but I said you gave it to Willie, and Willie should have it. So I shortened it and cut the sleeves down, and made it doublebreasted, and it fits beautiful. Here, Willie, come and put it on and show the gentleman!" 1 said nothing. I was beyond speech. Kindness is its own reward. It was my luest overcoat, and just three months old. MY TESTAMENT HAD BEEN BURIED TOO. I had a litwie pocket Testament which, for sentimental reasons, 1 valped highly. Money would not have made me part with it. I read from it to poor old Giles, who was dying, and nothing would satisfy him but that J must leave it by his bedside. With inanv injunctions as to its care I left it Kindness again! Each time I went to se him I read from it, and left it. Then 1 got the flue, and while 1 had it in excelsis old Giles died. A clerical neighbour took the funeral. When i tottered forth, I went *o get my Testament. "Lor', sir," said Mrs. Giles, "it be buried with "im!" Kindness is its own reward. There came some new folk to the village—old lady, son, and daughter-in-law. They were not o£ my particular brand of religion; but when the old ladv got ill, and was ordered to lie on a water-bed, I was kind, and loaned them the article. To be quite correct I told the old lady's son he could fetch it. 1 was not at home when they called. Of course they shold have emptied the bed of .water, but they didn't. The weight of a lull water-lied I should estimate at about one ton. THEY SLIPPED AND THE BED BURST. After trying, and failing, to carry it on his back, he got Bill Sims to help him, and it was wheeled to the cottage on two side-by-side barrows. At the gate, too narrow for a barrow, they essaved to lift the bed. I think th/ey lifted it all right but something tvent wrong when they were negotfatmg the gate. Sims slipped : or, perhaps, it was the old lady's son who slipped; or possiblv they both slipped. At any rat?. Sims got all the water-bed, and got it suddenly, and went down with a whop. Hie strained his knee and fractured his elbow. The bed burst, and the cascade of water rushed mto the ditch where five little chicks,the lawful property of Mrs. Brown—were looking for—well, anything but a young Niagara. Four of'them found a watery grave It cost me 8s fid to have the lied mended, and I paid for four chickens •it lOd. each—3s -Id. 1 gave Sims—who '5 a cowman, and an obnoxious person -a sovereign, a lawyer firend of mine mving told me that in Taw, if not 111 oquitrt, I was liable, and I had a fullsized row with Sims' employer, a farmer, who highly objected to havng to milk his cows himself. Said he'd never come to my church again. And he hasn't I , Kindness is its own reward.