Hector Bolitho Recalls Days

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 851, 20 December 1929, Page 5 (Supplement)

Hector Bolitho Recalls Days

“Down on the Farm”

‘'Thistledown and Thunder,” “Judith Silver" and ‘‘The Netc Zealanders” are among the books bearing Hector Bolitho's name. .Vr. Bolitho is an Aucklander. He has done fournalistic work in New — Zealand, Australia. Canada. South Africa and London. He has also collaborated with the Dean of Windsor in editing the Letters of Lady Augusta Stanley.

I HAVE reached the age when I frown at sentiment, but Christmas is the season when the very Scrooges may unbend. I claim the right to unbend with them.

All through these English years, when the months have moved on toward shivering December, I have remembered the glor.ous Christmases of my childhood. They came in the fierce heat of summer. I can remember that on my uncle’s farm on the Jlanukau, the pump handle used to be so hot that the farm boy had to wrap canvas round it before he could touch iL

How jealously I remember the farm, with its flowers and colour and the scene beyond the hawthorn hedge, of lazy ponderous cattle in the field: the dreams X wove, lying in the long, dry grass.

All the sense of beauty 1 have with me now was born in the open country of New Zealand. The shred of truth which is in me was born on that little farm, when X used to press my face to the earth and love its smell. How many times I have been startled at the memory, in the years that have followed! And In that memory lies any Christmas Wish I have for young people in New Zealand. Love your earth. Love the earth from which your country gains its strength. Our reputation is fair in England. English people throw their prejudices aside and smile affectionately when our name is mentioned. But that is because New Zealanders, away from the cities, are people of the earth. The harvest, the valleys, tlie gardens and the exquisite tiredness which comes from tramping on hills; these are New Zealand. Not the climbing buildings and the crowded streets. And still, a little sententiously perhaps, I repeat my Christmas wish; that you should learn to love the open fields of your country, believe in them, see their beauty, and believe in the happiness which is born uoon them. For those who are gardeners or farmers are a little nearer God than any other people of the world. HECTOR BOLITHO