Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1887 — A Case of Generosity. [ARTICLE]

A Case of Generosity.

A little negro boy used to loiter around Millionaire Armour’s stables in years gone by. His clothes were in tatters, his kinky hair peeped through a rent in his hat, and his feet were strangers to comfortable stockings and shoes. The king of the pork packers took an interest in the lad, and one day he called him into his barn and asked him why he didn’t go to school. The boy replied that he didn’t have any money. . ■ “Well, would you go if you had the money ?” asked the rich packer, placing his hand on the boy’s head. “Oh, golly, yes; I’d go to-morrow?” was the quick response. A few days later the boy started for an educational institution located in a small town in Maryland. Armour’s money was in the pockets of the lad’s new clothes, and a letter of introduction to the principal of the school, written by the packer himself, was in his valise. Years passed. The student grew' to the stature of a grenadier, he became proficient in his studies, and was at last chosen captain of a military organization made up of fel-low-schoolmates. The student, whose name, by the way, is Forest, never forgot his benefactor. Letters passed between them at regular intervals, the packer accompanying his missives with handsome remittances. During his last vacation the student came to Chicago to visit Mr. Armour and, the friends of his youth. He presented the packer with a portrait of himself, and the night before he left the city to return to his college he indicted a most touching letter of gratitude to his benefactor, which contained, among other things, this singular passage: “When I return to school ! go not like the bonded slave, but like Caesar to the Senate Chamber.” Armour cut this passage out of the letter, and, pasting it on the back of the negro’s portrait, had the picture framed. He then gave it a position on his office desk, where it still remains.— Chicago Herald. ■ ..., - It is said that a clean kitchen was George Eliot’s favorite sitting-room. We are left in doubt as to whom she invited when she wanted to really and truly enjoy‘herself.