Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 December 1892 — A Hard Hearted People. [ARTICLE]

A Hard Hearted People.

Filial piety finds no place in the Thibetian character. It is no uncommon thing for a son to turn his father, when too old to work, out of doors and to leave him to perish in the cold. The superstition that the souls of the dead can, if they will, haunt the living drives their hardened natures to gain by the exercise of cruelty the promise of the dying that they will not return to earth. As death approaches the dying person is asked, “Will you come back or will you not?” If he replies that he will they pull a leather bag over his head and smother him; if he says he will not he is allowed to die in peace. Men seem to be very much alike the world over. Whenever the Czar has a spasm of economy he always begins to cut down expenses first in his wife’s allowance. The last time his Majesty had an attack of thriftness he reduced the amount of his wife’s spending money. Thia time it is a journey she proposed to take in the Caucasus that has been abandoned on account of the expense attendant upon her travelling with her suite.