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The Spike or Victoria University College Review 1931

[in memoriam]

Many of the present generation of students, especially the members of the S.C.M., remember with affection and gratitude the quiet but radiant personality of May Johnson, who was one of the graduates of 1928. An eager scholar, and intensely interested in life in all its manifestations, she was, while still at College, a leader in the schoolgirls' branch of the Christian Union, and when she left as dux of the school in 1924, she carried her ideals into her University life and became, by her clear sincerity and joyful enthusiasm, one of the most active members of the Student Christian Movement.

During the last three years, May was battling 'with a fatal illness, yet, like her beloved proto-type and ensample, R.L.S., she never "faltered in her great task of happiness." In an article she wrote recently she quoted about W. H. Hudson: "He loved laughter; it was like a human song to him, the note of happiness"; and that human song mingled very often with the song of her beloved birds in the pine-tree close at hand.

With Stevenson and Hudson, Mary Webb and Katharine Mansfield, she drank deep, during those three quiet years, of the rich wine of life, and as she said herself, gathered great wealth of hidden treasure from all that was beautiful in thought and action. Fellow students in increasing numbers made pilgrimages to her little balcony, there find uplift and encouragement in their own battles. And it was not only her old associates who shared her garnered treasures. For the last two years she has poured them out unstintingly before a brave little band of girls into whose thoughts and feelings she could enter with special understanding and sympathy. In connection with the Guide Movement there is a branch the members of which are all crippled or sick. They carry on all their activities by correspondence, and are able to share many interests and help one another in all sorts of ways. When a senior section of this branch, the Post Rangers, was being organised, May Johnson saw its wonderful possibilities, and drew upon every talent she possessed to make it a success. She devised a scheme by which each girl contributed not only a cheerful, friendly letter, but also an article on her own pet subject to a monthly circulating "Budget." These articles cover all phases of life from cookery to literature, and in her own contributions May poured forth with generous hand all her garnered treasures of humour and practical information, of poetry and beauty, illustrating everything by clever drawings and coloured sketches. No human mind can assess the value of this self-forgetful work.

May was so full of "life," of keen interest in every detail of human affairs, that it was difficult to realise by how slight a bond her spirit was held, and the announcement that she had suddenly passed away on June 13th came with as great a shock as if she had been leading a life of vigour and activity. Among her papers, this poem was found, written just four months before she died.