Wading through a mountain of mail/reading material which had accumulated during our 3 months absence in Western Australia, I came across this interesting 'composition' which I'd like to share with you all. Apologies if some of you have seen this before. Here goes:-
A group of students in a school in England was asked by their instructor to write a composition on "True Greatness". There was a young girl in the group who came from a poor family, all members of which lacked advanced education.Hence, it was not expected that she would enter anything remarkable on the subject of greatness. Here is what she wrote: " *A person can never get true greatness by trying for it. You can get it when you are not looking for it. It is nice to have good clothes. It makes it a lot easier to act decent, but it is a sign of true greatness to act when you have not got them just as good as if you had. One time when Ma was a little girl, they had a bird at their house called Bill, that broke his leg. They thought they would have to kill him, but next morning they found him propped up sort of sideways on his good leg, singing! That was true greatness. Once there was a woman who had done a big wash, and hung it on a line. The line broke and let it all down in the mud, but she didn't say a word. She did it all over again, and this time she spread it on the grass where it couldn't fall. But, that night, a dog with dirty feet ran over it. When she saw what was done she sat down and did not cry a bit. All she said was, "Ain't it queer that he didn't miss nothing?" THAT was true greatness, but it is only people who have done washing that know it" *Words from a young girls which ring so true! Mervyn Maciel
