"NOT UNDERSTOOD."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 41, 9 July 1914, Page 3

"NOT UNDERSTOOD."

To the Editor, Sir,—l have received a circular from Dunedin bearing signatures of Rev. Waddell, D.D., Mark Oohen, Alex. Bathgate, Wm. Reid, etc., all well-known to any person who has desided in Otago's capital. Tho circular invokes a little monetary assistance from the admirers of Tom Bracken, author of the above beautiful poem,, which has aptly been termed a similitude of life, for the purpose of erecting a suitable headstone and railing over his grave in the Northern Oemctery, Dunedin. There are, 1 know, a number of Otago people in tin: Tajar.aki district, who have enjoyed writings of Bracken, and who maivi wish to join in giving a little to the above object; and if so, I will he only too glad to send an offering from Taranaki. Those who knew Tom Bracken (as I did, for I was engaged in the same office and lived in the same house with him when Dunedin ha<l its Bell Tower Hill), will remember him as a-warm-hearted, genial, generous-hearted and simple-minded man. He had no relatives in Dunedin—hence, probably, the reason of the neglect of his grave. Let mc ask Bracken to be remembered by quoting a few lines of his poem senrron: "Oh Cod! that men would see a little clearer; Or judge less harshly where they cannot see; Oh God, that men would draw a little nearer, To one another they'd be nearer Thee, And understood." I am, etc., Wm. T. JENNINGS New Plymouth, June 7, 1014.