Art Union Hopes

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 810, 2 November 1929, Page 18

Art Union Hopes

OFFICIAL CORRESPONDENCE INCLUDES HUNDREDS OF CONFIDENCES 1

EDGAR IN A DILEMMA

Edgar is probably suffused in blushes sti 11, although it is two weeks since he committed an incredible blunder. Edgar was a young man who muddled a love affair with an art union. little story of Edgar was salvaged from a mass of thousands of letters. All this correspondence had flooded into the offices of the Auckland Aero Club art union. Edgar had his visions, as every young man should, and he was mercenary enough to contemplate what a £2,000 prize in an art union would mean to him—and to Betty. To Betty, Edgar wrote of a roseate future; to the art union people, he performed a practical task of buying coupons. His blunder took place when he sent Betty the coupons and the art union people a love letter. Edgar’s letter had the effect of a bombshell when it reached the art union offices. But that is the lighter side of art union correspondence. Enter the office of an art union a few days before the important procedure of drawing for prizes and one will be faced with enormous filing systems, rows and rows of ticket butts, vast registers of names and addressee of people at the ends of the world, and thousands of letters, written for some unaccountable reason to officers of the art union and containing amazing confidences. FACETIOUS AND AVARICIOUS Just why unheard-of people write of the depth of their struggles in life* of what they will do when they win, is little short of a problem. A student of psychology will find material in these letters. Many are facetious, many reveal avarice, some are tragic* In one day 2,000 letters arrived at the office in Auckland. For a simple statement of hardship, the letter of a woman in a provincial town commends itself. “My husband is delicate and I am finding it impossible to provide for him and my young boy,” she wrote. “Life is a difficult struggle. . . She sent half a crown with her hope to improve her position. She made a request to Mr. W. H. Potter, organiser of the art union. “You are lucky,” she said. “Will you choose the number of my ticket?” A Nelson woman is facing hardship, too. “Perhaps this art union will mean everything to me,” she said. And side by side with these stories of privation are purely facetious letters. One could not fail to hope for success for those women crushed by poverty. MANY TIRADES There are tirades from people condemning “gambling.” One critic went to the extent of asking an art union officer what he would say, through his connection with “this invidious evfl,*’ when called to face his Redeemer. Violent criticisms are frequent; milder reproois a.e s;- iu ini quotations from the Scriptures. Stranger even than Edgar’s bright effort was the letter of an Indian who said he was a jeweller in a Fijian town. lie was cautious. He asked for a booklet of tickets and said: ,4 I will send you money afterward.” Then came the Babu touch of an Indian student of English. “Please send us carefully, with quickly kindly,” concluded this hopeful Indian. And all these people will centre their ; attention on Tuesday next. At two o’clock in the afternoon, in the Chamj ber of Commerce, the drawing of ! will take place. The thing which will satisfy the Babu-class Indian of Fij* is the possibility—but possibility *® an elusive state—of one ticket cap* turing each of the main prizes. A sep* . arate drawing is made for each. Th® fortunate winner may be Edgar or thS ’ Babu. Immense organisation is needed an art union. There were ten district , agents in New Zealand, with suh- . agents and then an army of min° r agents.