Rensselaer Republican, Volume 28, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1895 — Wretched Vanity. [ARTICLE]

Wretched Vanity.

Twenty years ago a poor woman was left a widow in the city of New Turk with two children. She was honest, energetic and an expert laundress. She succeeded in keeping a comfortable home for her children aud-in-edueating "them. Her ambition wasnOt that they should be honest, energetic working people, but a “lady and a gentleman.” Emma, the daughter, was sent to a private school, taught superficial accomplishments, - and to play on ~ the" piano and dance. She made her way. through some of her school aeqtiainranees, into families who would not have recognized the poor washerwoman, and wore gaudy clothes and cheap jewelry which her mother slaved to buy for her. She married a salesman In a retail shop, a man weak in body and mind. His scanty salary she wasted on finery for herself and her children, and when he lost his situation a year ago she came back w r ith them to the mother whom she had so long declared was too “vulgar” ’to acknowledge before the world. Tom, her brother, was a keen-witted young fellow r , whose only ambition was to be “swell.’’ He bad a place as copying clerk in a shop on the Bowery, lost It at the beginning of the hard times two years ago, and remained Idle, dependent on his mother. When her employers offered to give him a situation as a messenger or porter, he haughtily refused it, as lie “had not come into the world to do menial work.”, Last spring the old washerwoman, worn out at last, fell ill, and Tom found himself starving. He pieked a woman’s pocket on a ferryboat, was caught in the act, tried and-sentenced to six months’ Imprisonment. His defense was that hq was starving. “You could have sold the expensive clothes you wear, or that scarf pin,’’ l said his law'yer. “No, sir,” Tom replied; “I may be unfortunate, but I shall always dress and behave like the gentleman that I am.” There is a sad, if not a shameful future for the boy or girl who lias never learned at home that humble independence is better than polite shiftlessness. And added to this it can be truly said that many a mother who has been indifferent to the cardinal virtues, and has taught her children only the graces of false gentility, has had bitter reason to regret the results that have followed her Unwise teachings.—Youth’s Companion.