DOWN AND OUTS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 718, 18 July 1929, Page 7

DOWN AND OUTS

“Widows” Selling HomeMade Sweets OLD MAN’S PITIFUL TALE ‘‘Would you care to buy a bag of home-made sweets to help a widow with four young children?” The pathetic face of a rather shabbily dressed young woman looks up appealingly at the accosted passer-by. On her arm hangs a basket, and uncovering its contents she displays a dozen or so bags of lollies.

The passer-by whose hasty journey has been thus interrupted reflects

that times are hard, and that there may really be four young children at home who do not know where their next meal will come from.

Further along the street there are | various other wayfarers who have been approached—all unsuccessfully. But after all, the undecided one remembers that he has been had so many times before, by “widows” with starving children. This looks as though it might be a really deserving case but not Saving the necessary powers of divination to decide the issue, he plays safe, and with a courteous “No thank you” continues on his way. He feels that perhaps he has been rather hard, and looks around guiltily to see what other passers-by are thinking. With a not too courteous sigh of despair—despair born of many refusals in the course of a morning’s round of the streets the shabbily dressed “widow with the four starving children” turns away to search other fields. And the accosted one consoles himself with the thought that after all “what use have I for home made sweets?” PART WELL DRESSED There are many such vendors of home made lollies tramping the streets of Auckland at the present time. Their numbers seem to have increased considerably during the past few months. They all he.ve starving children at home. Sometimes it is four, at others it is tw'o and often the number goes up to six. And they are all widows. They dress the part remarkably well, too, and no doubt do a considerable trade preying on the sympath-etically-inclined passers by. They may be genuine cases of the hardship born of the depression and unemployment in the city, and they may not. It is unfortunate, that they cannot produce credentials to satisfy the hard hearted citizen. A little further along the street—a street in the vicinity of the waterfront—the recently accosted traveller is held up in his travels again. This time an old man, very down at the heels, is the interrupter. Into the unwilling ears of one who begins to wonder if he has not a particularly simple demeanour is poured the tale of woe. “I have been tramping all night from Papakura in the pouring rain,” the mud bespattered specimen of humanity begins. “I arrived from Home two months ago and have been trying unsuccessfully ever since to get a job. I used to be an accountant, but there are no openings for me here. As soon as employers see my white hair they turn me down, and a shingled headed flapper gets my job. They told me to try the country. As I didn’t have a cent to my name I had to walk, and for a week stuck to a job grubbing gorse and blackberry at Papakura. But I couldn’t stand it. I have never lifted anything heavier than a pen in my life before. TWO YEARS BEGGING “I am going back home by the next boat, but I have not got the price of a meal to keep me till then.” The beggar then requests the price of a meal, or failing that the price of a cup of tea. “I have some money coming by boat from Home tomorrow and promise faithfully to repay you if you will give me your address,” he says. The bored one fumbles in his pocket for threepence, but cannot lay hands on one at the time. He knows that he will never see the money again, so he dares not risk anything bigger. The old man is referred to the different city missions and soup kitchens, but he seems not the least inclined to go there. So with a black look of “you’re a hard man” he wanders off. Still further along the road the traveller passes a lorry-driver who has been looking on during the little interview, and is informed that the man “two months out from home” has been frequenting the same street for two years past begging for meals and cups of tea . . . !