Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1883 — Mean People. [ARTICLE]

Mean People.

One of the oldest things in the world is the fact that mean people do not know that they are mean, but cherish a sincere conviction that they are the souls of generosity. You will hear them inveighing loudly against a neighbor who does not come up to the standard of a generous man, and decrying the sin of hoarding and withholding, without being sensible in the least that they are condemning themselves. They are usually people who are not in the habit of self-criticism, and if they were not amusing they would be the most aggravating class alive. Moreover, they are generally people who are not only willing to receive, but who demand a great deal at the hands of others; yet the example of their friends jin giving and lending never seem to strike them as at variance with their own line of conduct, and if by any chance they part with a farthing, it appears to them a more magnanimous act than the founding of a hospital by another. The mean person must be brought to a lively sense of the need before opening her purse; as for beggars she disapproves of them altogether ; they are as pestiferous as the mosquito in her eyes, and ought to be .legislated out of existence. We do not, however, always find the mean person among the rich; ahe’is quite as likely to be poor; indeed; one of the great advantages of poverty is that it often obliges one to seem small, obliges one to think of the candle-ends when one would prefer to think of better things. jMoney does not make a person mean ■necessarily, or we should not all be struggling so desperately to obtain it; Kt ought rather to be a preventive. .The disease lies in the disposition of (the individual, and it is doubtful if any circumstances can eradicate it; and, while in this view we may easily iforgive her, we find her vastly inconvenient to deal with. If she is the employer, the mean woman is apt to get As much work from her servant as possible. On some pretext or other she Retains her seamstress after her regular /lay’s work is over, underpays her wash-er-women, or exchanges old c uds for clean linen; keeps the servants’ fires low, or pays their wages with cast-off jfinery. Sometimes indeed, it is the who gives poor work for liberal payment; sometimes it is the husband ■who dines sumptuously at his club, while his family sit down to spare diet; Sometimes it is the landlord who obliges Jthe tenant to make his own repairs or go shabby; sometimes it is the neighbor who borrows but never lends; the manufacturer who adulterates food or drugs; the step-mother who feeds children on skimmed milk; the mother-in-law, who grudges her son’s wife the fallals she Jias not been used to, or the daughter-in-law, who makes her husband’s mother feel like a stranger in her home. Indeed, meanness is such an unloyely trait that it is no wonder we all disown it.—Harper's Bazar.