The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1871-07-13
The Rising Generation Of the South.

When people are poor they are foolish to at.
tempt to live as if they were rich. The OLD
and Young, the males and females, of every
family which has the misfortune to be poor,
ought to bear the burden together, and ought
to work together to increase the common store.
If there is but ore working person In the fam,
ily, and he is generally the father, his nose vii!
be kept at the grindssone from one years end
to another, unless he has well-ordered house.
hold. The wife can greatly aid him by her
sympathy, by frugal management, by cheer
fll temper, and by instilling into the young
people lessons of economy and industry. 10
attempt to live as rich people do, when tam
lily is poor, is not only sham and cheat, but
sitmakes the head of such family hopeless
slave and drudge, and absolutely perpetuates
the poverty so sedulously sought to be con-
cealed. -,
We are, with few exceptions, all poor alike
in the South. Let Us not be ashamed OF 1t,
and not commit the folly of increasing and
continuing it by contemplate shifts to hide it.
It is an evil, but the way to conquer. it, Is to
look it in the face; to go to work, and to prac.
tice economy. IF all that an oyer-worked
father makes is consumed in supporting sons in
idIeness and daughters in all the extravaganza
Of fashionable dressing and display, what
earthly prospect viii there be of an improve
msnt in circumstances If the over-wOrked
head of the family lives under all his burdens,
he lives to see increasing helplessness all around
him in that family which ought to be source
of comfort to him. If he dies, a-yictim to his
heavy burdens, he leaves behind him sons un-
trained towork-possibly of expensive if not
dissipated habits, and daughters without any
resources whatever, and miserable because they
cannot continue to keep up the poor delusion
that they are part and parcelof the fashionable
world.
No situation in life can be more CALLING than
that of q poor family striving to hide its pow
erty by aping the fashions. If the effort made
.by its members to keep up a false show were
but directed to useful ends, the result would be
most propitious. AS it is, all they can.do is to
keep their heads above water and be tolerated
in the world of fashion. To compass this pitt
full end they pass through purgatory. They
sacrifice self-respect, solid comfort and all the
sacred duties of domestic life in order to get
an uncertain and very humble position In that
society which is called fashionable.
This is unworthy of people who have spark
of intellect. 1t will, if it becomes prevalent
among us, be more disastrous even than the
war was. It will fasten poverty upon us for
successive generations and make us set OF 30
cial cheats and humbugs.
If thoughtless boys and giduy misses are
allowed their way, they will of course, keep
away from the tasks of life and seek only its
pleasures. But they ought not to be allowed to
have their way. They should be controlled.
The BOYS should be brought up with the idea
that life has its serious duties and respohsbili=
ties, and that chief among them is the courage
10 work and the girls should be taught that
they cease to be the ornaments of domestic life
when they sacrifice everything TO fashion and
empty show. -,
Real gentility is something higher and nobler
than mere fashion and genteel poverty is far
more respectable than the vulgar snobbery that
80 many weak minded and white blooded peo..
pie cultivate all their lives long.-Riehmond
Whiq.