Tárogató, 1945-1946 (8. évfolyam, 1-7. szám)
1945-12-01 / 6. szám
16 TÁROGATÓ is home-grown. —The Children’s Newspaper. —Canadian Girl. STRANGE BELL RINGERS Behind the twelve-hundred-year-old cathedral at Wells, England, known as the City of Waters, stands the palace of the bishop. It is surrounded by a willow-shaded moat and here are to be seen the famous white swans, descendants of those brought from Rome centuries ago. They are so tame that they will come when called. In the “Requirements for the Bishop’s Palace,” the feeding of the swans is «operative, and has brought a curious system into usage. A low casement window in the shadiest part of the palace wall is always open when there is no ice on the moat. From it hangs a cord buoyed with a 'cork so that it will float on the water beneath. When hungry, the swans sail gracefully to the cord, seize it in their bills and tug. The tugging rings a bell in the palace and instantly a uniformed attendant appears to feed the bishop’s beautiful charges. In cold weather swans are warmly housed, —Canadian Girl. A LIFE OF SERVICE Edith Shelley, an English woman who for fourteen years had been a leper, died recently at her post in Central Africa. Twenty years ago she volunteered to nurse in Africa with the Universities’ Mission, and after she herself had contracted leprosy, she dedicated her life and her resources to the service of her even more unfortunate fellow sufferers. While receiving the necessary treatment, to which she responded fairly quickly, Edith Shelley lived close to the Leper Camp at Makaseka, near Lulindi in Tanganyika Territory, and made a close study of leprosy and its treatment, She came to the conclusion that the segregation of lepers (except in incurable and highly infectious cases) was likely to produce the reverse effect to that desired. The real hope of exterminating leprosy was, she decided, to establish clinics and to persuade people to visit them as out-patients in the very early stages of the disease. So she began a work which developed beyond all expectation, a fortunate improvement in her private resources enabling her to shoulder the financial burden of her undertaking. At first Edith Shelley built two or three clinics within easy reach of Lulindi, gradually extending her work until she had clinics as far as 80 miles away. These she would visit in turn, either on foot or on a bicycle, living most frugally in true Franciscan spirit, and carrying in a little kitbag the few things she needed. How she accomplished all she did was ever a marvel, and never did she utter a word of complaint of the hardness of her lot. She was greatly encouraged by the visit in 1938 of Dr. Ernest Muir, the eminent specialist, who said that her work was some of the best that he had seen in the Territory. Edith Shelley tramped hundreds, probably thousands, of miles. When a place was discussed, someone would say, “Isn’t that too far?” Her answer was, “What nonsense! It is only an eight-hour walk!” She began by taking to help her one or two African boys who had contracted the disease. When she had trained them she put them in charge of clinics, which she visited every two or three weeks. Wherever she heard there was a number of lepers some distance from a dispensary, there she would start a clinic. She fulfilled her purpose in life, for she showed her fellow sufferers how they can best be helped, The knowledge that she herself was a leper and was having “needle dawa” (injections) has given Africans greater confidence. African nurses cared for her in her last illness, and when she died, rifles were fired in the village as for the death of a chief. The name of brave Edith Shelley will stand with that of Father Damien as a true servant to the lepers of the world. —The Children’s Newspaper. —Canadian Girl. LAMPS OF GOD His lamps are we To shine where He shall say; And lamps are not for sunny rooms Nor for the light of day, But for dark places of the earth Where shame and wrong and crime have birth; Or for the murky twilight gray Where wandering sheep have gone astray; Or where the light of faith grows dim, And souls are groping after Him; And as sometimes a flame we find Clear shining through the night— So bright we do not see the lamp But only see the light So may we shine—His light the flame That men may glorify His name.
