GIRLS, LITTLE, AND SLAMMING DOORS
A trick that every one abhors
In little girls is slamming doors.
A wealthy banker's little daughter,
Who lived in Palace Green, Bayswater
(By name Rebecca Offendort),
Was given to this furious sport.
She would deliberately go
And slam the door like Billy-Ho!
To make her uncle Jacob start.
(She was not really bad at heart.)
It happened that a marble bust
Of Abraham was standing just
Above the door this little lamb
Had carefully prepared to slam,
And down it came! It knocked her flat!
It laid her out! She looked like that!
Her funeral sermon (which was long
And followed by a sacred song)
Mentioned her virtues, it is true,
But dwelt upon her vices, too,
And showed the dreadful end of one
Who goes and slams the door for fun!
—H. Belloc.
(1218)
GIRLS, TRAFFIC IN
Twenty-six years ago in New York City,
when I first began to feel an interest in unfortunate
girls, and established the first
Florence Crittenton home, now known as
the Mother Mission, one of the things which
surprized and imprest me most in coming
close in touch with the subject, was that almost
every girl that I met in a house of sin
was supporting some man from her ill-gotten
earnings. Either the man was her husband,
who had driven her on the street in order
that he might live in luxury and ease, or
else he was her paramour, upon whom with
a woman's self-forgetful devotion she delighted
to shower everything that she could
earn. In addition to this form of slavery,
I also found that the majority had to pay a
certain percentage of their earnings to some
individual or organization who had promised
them immunity from arrest and to whom
they looked for protection.
But when we began to get closer to the hearts of the girls, to know their true history, we discovered that the commencement of this form of slavery had been even in a baser form—that before the girls had become so-called "willing slaves" they were "unwilling slaves." Many of them had fought for their liberty and had submitted only because they had been overcome by superior force. Some of them had been drugged; others kept under lock and key until such time when either their better nature had been drugged into unconsciousness or hardened into a devil-may-care recklessness.—Ernest A. Bell, "War on the White Slave Trade."
(1219)
GIVERS, CLASSES OF
First, those who give spontaneously and
generously, but only to themselves—auto-*givers
they might be called.
Second, those who give thoughtlessly, without any real or high motive—givers of the occasion, as it were.
Third, those who give as a sop to conscience and self-esteem; in a species of atonement for the evil they do—penitential givers.
Fourth, those who give as a matter of display, to win public applause for their generosity—theatrical givers.
Fifth, those who give because others give, because they are expected to give, and are ashamed not to give, and therefore give grudgingly—conventional givers.
Sixth, those who give because they feel they ought to give; who give through a sense of duty and not through love—moral givers.
Seventh, those who give in the spirit of Jesus; who give because they love their neighbor as themselves, and above all things desire to help him—spiritual givers.
To which do you belong?
There are lots of men who will sing with gusto in a missionary meeting:
"Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small,"
but when the collection-plate is put under
their nose and they are asked to put their
sentiments into cold, hard cash, they drop a
five-cent piece upon it with a sigh of regret,
which suggests these other well-known
lines,
"When we asunder part,
It gives us inward pain."
—E. L. Meadows, Pittsburg Christian Advocate.
(1220)
GIVING
Kerman, in Persia, has been sacked at
least six times. In 1794 the city was almost
entirely destroyed by Agha Mohammed
Khan, who later demanded twenty thousand
pairs of human eyes before he would with-
