THE GOOD AS WELL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 July 1941, Page 6

THE GOOD AS WELL

“OPERATIONS A HOBBY” This is a bad old world. There is no denying it. If you wish to deny it, look about you at all the suffering and injustice and cruelty and ugliness. It is a bad old world. I say but it is a good, kind world also. Albert Froidevaux found it so. He Avas born near Lausanne. He joined the Foreign Legion, was sent to a French colony in Asia, and there contracted a mysterious disease which has remained a mystery. As a result he Avas operated on no less than 49 times, and one day he found himself without cither arms or The agony he suffered cannot be imagined. For nine years he Avas shut away in a bedroom and never saw the world.

Then someone sent him a wireless set —and he realised, with a rush of emotion, that there is kindness. One day a young woman Avho was a AvidoAV and had four small children asked if she might take him out of doors in a wheeled chair. Poor Albert could not believe his cars. What a kind world it really was! She called again, and again, and at last they were married, and his cup of joy was overflowing.

He suffered much after that. He went blind for months. He had more operations —they were his hobby, he said. He lost his reason for a time, but his brave wife kept him cheerful all the time, and at last he learnt to type, writing a book which proves once more that hoAvever much bad there is in the world there is good as well.