CHAPTER VII.
TO CURE, OR TO ENDURE?—THAT IS THE QUESTION.
- "Rise up, ye women that are at ease; hear my voice, ye careless daughters; give ear unto my speech!"—Isaiah XXXii., 9.
Surely the time will come in this country, where the elements of general prosperity have not been destroyed by the foolish combinations and wicked monopolies of men, when the poor will have less need of the passive virtues, and be sure of a field and certain harvest for the active ones; when no father, like poor Lee, will, by intemperance or any other vice—for all vice is more or less destructive—prostrate his family in the dust; when physical, intellectual, and moral education will have raised the level of our race, and brought it to as near an approximation to equality of condition as it is capable of in its present state of existence. One important step to this happy result is in the power of every mistress of a family. She must first enter into the sentiment which was so well expressed by Lord Chesterfield, who, in his last will, in making some bequests to his servants, calls them his "unfortunate friends, his inferiors in nothing but position."[1] When she realizes this,
- ↑ An instance of almost unparalleled magnanimity in the discharge of a duty to one of these "inferiors in position", occurred
