HIGGLED-PIGGLEDY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 892, 8 February 1930, Page 8

HIGGLED-PIGGLEDY

THE QUIET CORN EH.

(Written for THE SUN by the Rev. Charles Chandler.)

■■rpHE world is upside down and everybody's trying to turn it right side up; that’s how it appears to me," said a very talkative stranger on my left in a crowded train.

“ 1 suppose they mean well, all these folk with their souls on fire for the ‘other fellow,' and yet I somehow feel that the world would be a better place to live in if everybody tilled his oivn piece of earth and planted it with virtues that are rare. "Its a poor argument that tries to prove a rule by quoting a particular instance, and yet I cannot help relating my impression of a man / once kneiv down in the King Country about twenty years ago ” continued the stranger. "If he wasn’t at church he was putting sand m his sugar, or growling at his wife. I’ve seen him ‘all of a lather’ preaching the Word and talking of sin—but when it came to driving a bargain I'd rather trade with the devil himself.” "Higgledy-piggledy.” That's what the trouble is. Very few of us have a true sense of values. We have not the faculty for seeing things two or three at a time, and in relationship to each other. Therefore we are all at twos and threes and at sixes and sevens with ourselves. We think and yet don't knoic what we think. We want and don't know what we want, and in order to rid ourselves of this indescribable longing we lose ourselves in the needs of others. "Perhaps that’s another way of explaining the necessity for service," said I. as the train pulled in and the stranger alighted. “Higgledypiggledy.” That’s how I felt ichen left alone to scan the headlines of a newspaper after taking a farewell glance at the stranger as he elbowed his way past the ticket collector. NEXT WEEK: FROGS IN THE DOWNPIPE.