You'll Need Hide

[?]en Friends Are Fun, But- You'll Need Hide For Your Xmas Box!

Some new angles on the hobby from SUSAN LANDFAIR

m ANY years ago (yes, many, I’m (I afraid) my name appeared in the Pacific Islands Monthly,

iking for pen-friends.

I received letters from all over ie world, and I answered nearly ery one.

There must be thousands of ;ople writing to other thousands tiom they have never met ;rsonally, only through the edium of pen, paper and stamps.

I’ve had letters from, and written tters to people living in England, ermany, Norway, Sweden, Canary lands, Sth. Africa, India, USA, ji, New Guinea, West Indies, ngapore, Holland, New Zealand id all States of Australia—besides any of our boys who were fighting erseas during the war.

I exchanged stamps and local ;ws (stamps, I think, must be the ain reason for overseas corres mdence) with a friend in USA r about twelve years, until he died, wrote to girls in England and □Hand until they, and I were arried. Eventually we stopped riting; married life must have made a difference”.

A school teacher in Norway anted me to “Correct his English, ease”, and return his letters with irrections. I did this and found a lot of fun. Most of his ntences ended with “Yes?, No?”, “It is in your country that you ive no snow, only hot sunshine? es? No?”

I followed a Fijian schoolboy trough his school years till he went America to study. I followed a erman nurse (we were both embers of the YWCA) through sr career in England. She went lome” for the war. There were a more letters.

I still write to a penfriend who /es near Te Awamutu in NZ and ave done so for nearly twelve jars; and another in Sth. Africa ir almost as long.

Exchanging letters with yet aother writer has helped us both ith “ideas” for our work, and now often send a congratulatory letter » a writer who has had something : special interest to me published l one of the numerous magazines I jad monthly.

YUT these have been the pleasant J people I have contacted through pen-friendship. I have received :her letters from people who are

not so nice and who are, plainly after as much as they can get.

A man in India blandly wrote a whole list of goods I would have to buy him if I was interested in writing to him. (It was not I who wrote in the first place and I have no idea where he got my name).

He listed the foot-size of every member of his family for me to supply shoes—as many as I could “now” and the rest “later” Post cards, photographs of all the capital cities of Australia, 20 copies each. And text books of -g «"Ject and in And not even a “please”! I don’t know how he expected me to send the stuff to him let alone buy it all. He probably owned one of

tovns'in

streets of an the dusty towns in

inaia *

Evidently he believed in the saying, “No hide, no Christmas box.” I kept that letter for a long time because friends wouldn’t believe me when I told them of it.

A girl from Melbourne wanted to bring her whole family to stay for three weeks holiday with me “because you sound so nice, Moving from one part of Sydney to another at that time was a wonderful, legitimate excuse. I did not send her my new address, Many wanted me to supply an extraordinary number of Australian stamps and first-day covers. There was no mention of “exchange .

They must have been business people, or people who made something “on the side. .While I’m a reasonably give and take female, I did not intend to let others ‘sponge” on me. Fair is S 5 ’ latest P frocks

™ipesflow” seeds, unusual, cards

and a handkerchief at Christmas time, even cheap travel books, are a p willingly given and received anc j provide lots of fun as well as comments in the next letter, when articles are virtually demanded it is carrying things too far. These are not pen-friends in the true sense of the word. But taking everything into considera tion, pen-friendships are worthwhile and, believe me, the thrill of being handed a letter with foreign stamps has never weakened in over twenty years of letter writing.