STARVING WOMAN'S SACRIFICE.

Taihape Daily Times, 15 August 1919, Page 2

STARVING WOMAN'S SACRIFICE.

I r —~o——— Here is a strange, but true, story. A Iwae-I‘.-,‘kuown, Loxjdgon .pi_lly.Sicilall,“ _on whose authority we tell it (says the [Morning Post), ‘was visited by a young seamstress, whose deep-set eyes, fur- ‘ rowed brow, -hollow cheeks, and thread. bare dress betokened a really desperate fight for existence. Obviously she was starVing'_ Yeit, taking from her pocket. a. bundle of Treasury notes t\o ‘the value of £93, which she promised to make up to £IOO, she pleaded with him to find a hospital fhat would accept ithis endowment, and use it for ‘fhe linstitutioii of an eight-hour day for

nurses. The physician ’s endeavours to persuade her from devoting all ‘her Savings to this object——in any case dithI cult to realise-——were unavailing,- but ‘drew from her ‘this piteous tale. Her I parents had -died when slle was :1 child. !leaving her to look after .a still ‘ younger brother, to whom she was'pasi sionately attached. ‘The lad "vlo~lunteered for the war. and fell—-. 11 terri'ble 'blow for his sister‘. who Worked night_.and day, suffering every privaition, in order to save money in order to set a memorial to “'her.boy.” Both impressed and distressed by this story of sacrifice, the doctor sent 1 a letter to »a-' London hospital, commend- “ ing the pious project of the poor seamstress, but before he received :1. reply— J w}li(-sh, by the way, entirely i9;nore(l the pi-oposal—she had died of s‘::u-vation.

Mr Philip Gibbs writes in the New England: In uLondon the man who came Iback meet again, and look round for old faces, and miss =lheni, and find all [things changed, and themselves most iehanged of all. Tlley cannot get back ‘again to where they were five years ago. "They cannot look at life in the same aloof way. They have been up to the neck in realities. They are the people who know, because of woull;.'s in their souls_ Their laughter has an ironical note in it. Their idealism is touched with naked rcnalism. And they have no sense of peace. They See trouble ahead. They are prophets of revolution and «anarchy. They find no sort of security in the peace that is being arranged in Paris. Beyond that they hear the menacing‘ roar of dis illusioned -and despairing peoples, the sullen revolt of hungry and workless masses, the Westward tide of Esel::hevism. The intellectuals of London, unetrtain or their own future, feeling their way back to professions which they left. in a. hurry, out of touch with their old instincts, and emotions, are restless and uiisett.led_. with melancholy in lonely hours, because of that “Dead Yesterday,” as one of them wrote, which will never have resurrection in their lives. They forsee :1 social revolution in which they will be the first victim's of sncrificfz.