"They are my chief comfort, to tell you the truth," she answered, as if in soliloquy, while she sifted handfuls of the white powder through her busy fingers, "and I thank God for this great compensation that has survived all my other pleasures. There is no wretchedness, I think, like that which must fill the heart of a mother whose children have strayed away from her loving, clinging solicitude into the by-ways of folly or vice. It is a dark blight upon the most buoyant heart that ever swelled with maternal devotion. I sometimes think I would rather have never existed, that I could forfeit all the grand privileges of a created being destined for a noble end, rather than have become the mother of impious and vicious children."
"Then it is well you have saved yours from such a common fate," I put in warmly, "for I think in the world's present stage, young people have a monopoly of all the evil tendencies to which our flesh is prone."
"You are right there Amey, and more's the pity," cousin Bessie answered, leaning her white palms on the sides of the dish and looking out of the kitchen window away over the steeples of the distant church, as if her glance fell upon the whole wicked world at once. "There is hardly a channel of sin and guilt that has not been explored by these young persons, who should not even know of the existence of such dangers. So much fine manhood is wasted in folly and dissipation; so many noble energies devoted to degrading causes, so much mental greatness given to solving the mysteries of villainy and roguery. Oh! it is written on the brow of modern youth, in flaming characters," she exclaimed, closing her fingers tightly over the edges of the dish, upon which her hands still rested. "When I pass along the busy streets of the town, I see the wickedness of the world on many a fair young face, and my heart swells with a great desire to know whose life is being saddened by their extravagances. 'They are dear to someone, surely,' I say to myself, 'there must be some one from whom they are trying to hide their deeds of darkness,' and I could almost stop to plead in favor of that lingering love, that they turn back from the beck and call of temptation to that other wholesome course which yields reward both here and hereafter. I cannot help this strong sentiment that stirs within my breast. I love the beauty of blooming human nature; I like to see the glow of physical and moral health upon its beaming countenance, and the stimulus to noble purposes in its restless heart, but it seems as if this never can be again with the majority."
"It is a sad outlook, Cousin Bessie, but there must be a remedy somewhere," I suggested, full of the enthusiasm which had characterized her remarks.
"Remedy? Yes, of course there's a remedy," she retorted emphatically, "but the world's votaries have elbowed it out. What can one expect from a baby girl who has been brought up for the world, but that she shall be of the world? Little misses who can waltz before they know the 'Our Father,' who are taught manners before morals, and are given for their absolute standard 'what others will say.' Can they become good women? It would be a paradox to suppose so. And our boys in knickerbockers who smoke cigars and buy ten cent novels, who speculate in the market of experience with ill-gotten gain, who form opinions of life from dime shows and contact with veterans in vice; can they grow in virtue and integrity after such an initiation as this? It would be nothing less than a moral phenomenon if they did. Yes there is a remedy, and its application is needed at the very root of the evil. Let fathers and mothers look abroad over the heads of their prattling offspring, and realize the fate that is awaiting them if they do not take proper and timely precautions. I attribute much blame to them because I have seen results of their carelessness grow and magnify under my own eyes."
Here the door-bell rang violently, and interrupted cousin Bessie's wholesome homily on the social irregularities of the day. As her hands were still buried in flour I started to my feet and answered the hasty summons. A man in ragged attire stood leaning against the outer post of the doorway. His soft hat was slouched over one eye, and his turned-up faded coat-collar but half-concealed the fragments of a soiled shirt front that lay open on his breast inside. When I confronted him, he advanced a step and said, with his eyes directed towards his boots,
"Will you give me a little help, miss, for God's sake. I am starving and can get no work."
Cousin Bessie from her place by the window could hear his words, and coming to the door, she looked at him from head to foot. He was young and stalwart, though so destitute.
"I will give you some work and pay you well for it" she said. "Come, you are a strapping young fellow and won't find it hard to do."
He was silent for a moment and still kept looking at his dilapidated boots.