Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1887 — Sponges. [ARTICLE]

Sponges.

We don’t mean those sponges that grow “in the bottom of the sea,” and which afford food for much scientific speculation, as to whether they are animal or vegetable. No, the sponges of which we mean to complain are distinctly animal, and are of both sexes. We all suffer from them. Bores and sponges are necessary evils, we suppose, but not any more to be admired for all that. Editors could a tale unfold of the way some people get their advertising done for nothing, and lawyers ctrald tell of tons of legal advice given by them without receiving the slightest acknowledgment, pecuniary or otherwise. Doctor-, also, are the victims of these questioners. Generally it is only the youngo members of these professions who suffer. Men old in the tricks of these friendly sponges manage to evade them, but the young editor, lawyer, or doctor though he knows he is being defrauded, has not the courage to cut short the confidential chat, by saying that he hopes to make his living by receiving pay for that which his friend expects to get for the asking. No one expects a carpenter, blacksmith, jeweler, or any one who plies a trade, to do the smallest job for nothing, and yet those who willingly pay for such labor seem to think they have done nothing of which to be ashamed if they “manage” to get legal or medical advice without having to pay for it. And among women the fault is as great. We have heard women boast of knowing “all kinds of fancy work and never paid a cent for lessons.” Their desire to learn fancy work was greater than their delicacy of feeling. Women who make their living by dress-making, millinery, teaching fancy work, or painting, are daily imposed upon by friends and strangers who come to them for suggestions and advice about material, shades, designs, and patterns—defrauding the worker of hours of valuable time without a thought of paying for the advice given, and often do not even thank the person for the suggestion which she has spent time and money in acquiring. Strange to say, these sponges are oftenest found among those who could well afford to pay for what they want; and stranger still is the fact that they would resent, with the greatest indignation, a refusal to oblige thenii, or an intimation that they were taking advantage of another’s politeness, and thus getting for nothing that which the giver has a right to expect something more substantial for than mere thanks. Minnie W. Armstrong, in St Louis Magazine.