Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1894 — Plain Speaking. [ARTICLE]

Plain Speaking.

The amount of plain speaking that people will bear from one of whoee good will they are assured is sometimes a surprise to others. In “Recollections of My Mother," Susan Lesley says that her mother had the greatest affection for both David Lee Child and his wife, the gifted Lydia Maria, but was often much tried with the amount of time, hard labor and money, which Mr. Child expended on toheme after scheme, none of which ever succeeded. One day Mrs. Child came in to spend a quiet afternoon with my mother. They sat with their sewing and knitting at the west window, whi e I sat with one or two friends in the ball near the open door. There had been a long silence, when we heard my mother say: “Mrs. Child, can you tell mo what is the last thing that your husband is engaged in?" An amused smile played over Mrs. Child’s face. “Yes, Mrs. Lyman; he is carting stone for the new railroad." “O-o-h!” said my mother. Another pause; then, “Mrs. Child, how much do you suppose your husband loses on every load of stone he carts to the railroad .•*” Another amused look oh the dear Lydia Maria’s fa and she answered cheerily, “Well, Mrs. Lyman, a; near as I can compute it, he must lose about 10 cents cn every load.” "Oh —well—now—Mrs. Child,” said my mother, in the bravest and most cheerful tone, “if your husband has got hold of any innocent occupation by which he only loses 10 cents on a load, for heaven’s sake encourage him in it." She had little patk nee with people who backed down in emergencies, and considered it her duty to stiffen them up a littlo. She never had to go far to find an illustration' “to point her moral and adorn her tale.” Some good neighbor’s example would instantly come to mind. “Look over the way at my neighbor Hunt’s front yard,” she would say; “see that splendid hydrangea, that elegant smoke bush, that buckthorn hedge, all in the most perfect order, and all kept so by her own hands. Always she ha 3 sickness, sorrow, death; at every turn something sad and unexpected. But who ever dreamed of Mrs. Hunt’s abdicating? She couldn't dolt” '