CRUEL CHILDREN

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 254, 18 June 1932, Page 3

CRUEL CHILDREN

INDICTMENT OF YOUNG PEOPLE BY PRIDE-BROKEN PARENT. BITTER P 0 ST-MORTEM REMORSE Before he died recently In the Hospital for the Aged and Infirm, Cheltenham, a man, aged 83, wrote the following remarkable letter expressing his views on the lives of old and indigent people. . He was regarded.as a fine old gentleman, and with his wife, who is still alive, had been an inmate of the institution for six years (says the Melbourne Herald). His letter, which contained an indictment of the young for their treatment of the old, read: "Old people do not always get a fair deal. ^ There is a tremendous amount of sadness in old age, and old people who are not prosperous are the saddest figures in life. Sons and daughters get petulant with them when they have to keep them. "They may not mean to be cruel. They may never say anything in words to show that thy are not wanted, but they do it in a thousand unspoken ways. The old are no longer important when they are dependent, and they are not referred to. Their opinion, being no longer necessary, is not asked. "Grudging Sanctuary." "Their pride, if they are nice old ' people, is broken, and it is usually the nicest old people who have the cruelest children. They haye given in to them all their lives, and they have given them of their best, and at -the low tide of life they have to seek a grudging sanctuary with them until the great call comes. "Filial duty is at its worst in Aus- 1 tralia at the present time. Ilt is an era of disrespect, backchat, of flouting the value of the past, of jeering at conventions that have been won by a rigid adherence to principles of righteousness and clean living. "Old people stand for all these things. If the children who despise them had had to go through the same hard school of life as their parents; if they had had to deny themselves little pleasures and do without big ones; if they had had to maintain the appearances demanded of a past generation on small incomes and live meagrely that their children might have the best education and he always nicely clad — they would not he so callous towards the old. "Easily Hurt." "They forget that children are the shares in which parents have sunk all their eapital, and these parents have a right to see a return on their investment in their old age. It is a business proposition. "No son or daughter should allow father or mother to feel in the way. No son or daughter should keep parents out of their own active lives. No son or daughter should allow de- 1 pendent parents to feel that the bread they eat is bitter bread, and, above all, no son or daughter should allow parents to go shabby, for there is no sight so pleasant as well-cared-for old people. "Old people want very little. They are easily satisfied, they are easily chilled, and they are easily hurt. They know they -are not so swiftly moving as the modern world demands of them, but they should have all these chills and hurts lessened, and their gentle pace made happy while they are here. "Post-Mortem Remorse." "When they go they will not return, and post-mortem remorse for things left undone is the bitterest f eeling to which men and women are heirs. "Be kind and gentle and generous to your old people. It will make you happier when your own pace grows slower, and it is a good example to your children, who are absorbing all your ways of life, your habits, and your attitude towards other people."