WHEN TROUBLE COMES

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 101, 18 April 1908, Page 4

WHEN TROUBLE COMES

IN PUAJSE OF "THE DISEX TAMiLJSK."

is in (he world still, in spite of all the rage for individua!isiu---iiay, perhap> because of it—for she is the woman I of catholic sympathies and the wide heart, who giving of her best to others, hfis realised the highest within herself. \\ e do not always recognise her at lir»t. because lite outward guise of her is somewhat ehauged. She is no longer placid, unemotional—a sort of mental pincushion for other people to stick pins into; nor is she, as she used to be, a piece of furniture by the family hearth. More often than not she is a lighter—one who hag known how to win her own. Hut, whatever her seeming, she is as vivid and real as she ever was—the woman who carrier the banner of selfsacrifice so smilingly that we do not know that she is waving it above our heads; the woman who is the friend and helper of the world.

Sometimes she is a happy wife and mother, and all lier husband's friends gather round her, and she hears and listens to the stories of love-lorn baehelois against their will, and deplores the predatory instincts of tiie landlady's cat. Sometimes, indeed, she listens to sadder stories; but we of the outside world do not know of this, for, having no secrets of her own, she can guard well those sad whispers that other people entrust to her care. She is, 1 think, r. I disentangler, for the sword of her wit j has cut the dillieulty of many a (Jordian knot, hoi* she is witty, this woman ol sympathy, and wisdom .its enthroneH in her eyes, and she wears the garland ot many friendships upon her brow. It may be that she is a happy spinstei, oue who has chosen her own Jot. or tor we do little choosing—she has accepted the destiny allotted to her. And because love has not shut her up in a little kingdom of her own. she has all the wide world for her adventuring. Sometimes >he is a woman who has adopted a profession, and made a in it, and her hours* are not her own. In medicine, she is given up to the service of the sick, and little children arc Ihy special care. Disease yields to her knowledge nad to Iter touch, and the >ympathy that is inborn here conies ibiy to her assistance. i it maybe, again, that she is a writer, mil plays on other heartstrings than 1 ier own. To the writer, humanity is J i book, and there is a joy in turning i new page. \\ ho knows the words of lope and comfort that may be carried * nto some distant home, merely because £ hey were written by one woman for an- t i tlier? t

But even to-day there are nutny women without a profession, and some of these fear that they may be superfluous in the world. To any such 1 recommend the career of disentangler, and bid thom tak 0 it up, to their uwn delight. 1-or good deeds are not written in water, ami men's kindly acts are not as the -amis of the desert—blown hither and thither. And if they are. they rest somewhere, and perhaps a flower to bloom; and in this utilitarian age the flowers that are planted in one's leasur c are as rare as they are fragrant when they burst into llower. The career of the disentangler, like most of the professions, is open to men aud women alike, and, in all humility, I commend it to the attention of those who read.