Tárogató, 1941-1942 (4. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1941-1 -01 / 4. szám
16 TÁROGATÓ Swooping down like a dark bird Without any twilight! Leave it intact... Under a few stars! —MONA GOULD Toronto Saturday Night. “Gone Out — Back Soon” She was a physician’s wife. He was a man of a strong, sunny nature, who carried good cheer into his patients’ homes, to sustain them in weakness and discouragement, and still carried back enough to fill his own home. His frail wife needed all the sunshine and vigor of his personality to sustain her; and it did not fail. She seemed to live so much by the strength of his spirit that when he passed away suddenly after a month of especially hard work, her friends said, “It will kill her!” But the ties between husband and wife were too strong to be broken by the incident of death. The memories of the past were as real as his presence had been. The religious life and the faith in God that they two had shared together did not fail her. By the doorway of the living room she fastened the card that he had sometimes left, in short absences, on his office door: Gone Out — Back Soon. Those who came with consolution went away, themselves consoled. They felt behind this frail form and lips that smiled while they quivered, a mysterious power, a spiritual experience that had united two souls in a marriage that death itself could not annul. More than one went out from her presence to find, in the years that followed, a strong, although secret consolation, in the deathless companionship, through memory, of his lost ones, and in the cheery suggestion of that brief message. The gospel of Jesus is in those four words: Gone Out — Back Soon. Putting Heart Into Men No man ought to be guilty of the unspeakable fault of needlessly crushing out the high hopes of any brother man. Life and life’s work for any of us require courage, and to take away any man’s mettle for the struggle and the task and give him doubt and hesitation and distrust instead is to be guilty of a hideous crime. When you are airily flinging out your pessimism and insisting that this is the devil’s world and that every man has his price and a pretty cheap one at that, the danger is that someone will half believe you and lose something of his faith and grip upon eternal and abiding things. To inspire a hope in a man, hope for himself, for his friends, for the future of goodness, is to do one of the best things you can possibly do for him. Not to do this when you can is to miss a great opportunity. To do the opposite of this and give a man fear for courage and distrust for faith is to sin a great sin against human progress and happiness. If you desire to do great things for the world give your life to putting heart into men. The Factory Goes on Working We are told that the four hundred employees at a shoe factory in Pasadena pay no attention to the stop-work bell at the end of the day, but go on working harder than ever. Here is the reason for their industry. Each week these workers volunteer to give twenty minutes of their spare time to making women’s shoes for the American Red Cross. The factory gives the material, and ninety-six pairs of shoes turned out each week are sent to Europe for refugees. The pioneer of this splendid idea, the president of the firm, is now touring the country explaining his scheme to manufacturers of clothing as well as shoes, in the hope that the plan may be adopted throughout the nation. If one hundred factories would follow this idea 9,600 pairs of shoes for the American Red Cross could be made a week. From Sydney comes news of two hundred mill hands and clothing machinists who are also extending their working hours to make clothes for the wives and children of our soldiers, and their materials are distributed by the women war workers unit of the Royal Empire Society. Many of the clothing shops in Canada have volunteered to make clothes for the British in the bombed areas. Garment makers right across Canada have given their time to make hundreds of garments. “Canadian Girl.”
