“I will sell my clothes, but my child shall not be different from others,” says a mother, who, no more than her husband, considers the spiritual aspect of the ceremony.
The domestic affections of the workman, where he has not been demoralized by licentiousness or vice, are strong, and his sense of duty to his relatives unusual. Thus it would seem not at all uncommon for a workman to support his wife’s mother, even when she lives far away. A workman who had done this for some time fell, through the state of public affairs, into such distress as to be obliged to earn his bread by selling journals in the street. After a time he recovered his position; but all through his period of poverty, the mother-in-law was allowed to believe that no change had taken place in his circumstances. Another workman, who had originally been in business as a butcher, partly ruined himself by undertaking the charge of his wife’s family. However, he never forsook the mother-in-law, but when he had a numerous family and only the small and precarious wages of a day laborer, she remained as much part of his family as the children.
The workman is careful of his children. He will fetch his daughter, apprenticed to dressmaking, from her work in the evening, and likes to have his son follow the same business as himself. He respects his own art, and has no desire to see his boy made into a clerk. If his wife is foolish enough to express such a wish he rates her soundly. “Does she want to make a skip-kennel (errand boy) of him because one gets dirty in factory work?”
“Thou knowest,” he concludes, “I always consider what thou sayest, but candidly, thou art unreasonable—wouldst thou then have him die of hunger when he is grown up? To slave at a desk is a miserable business; one ought to have a manual trade, with that a man always has his living at his fingers’ ends. Why! thou hast never said I was too dirty for thee; ah! I should like to see him a clerk. And to think that there are people who pretend that the woman has as much judgment as the man. Yes, yes, thou art a very good sort of a woman, but at bottom thou knowest nothing. Henri shall be a mechanic; the devil may burn me if ever he becomes a scribbling puppet.”—Good Words.
[A PROPHECY.]
By the Rev. BENJAMIN COPELAND.
O, happy, happy, happy boy!