Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1871-06-30
The Rising Generation of the
South

When people are poor they are foolish t.
attempt to live as if they were rich. The
old and young, the males and females, o.
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 one working
person in the family, and be is generally the
father, his nose will be kept at the grind
stone from one years end to another, unless
he has well ordered household. The wife
can greatly aid him by her sympathy, by
frugal management, by cheerful temper,
and by Installing into the young people
lessons of economy and industry. To at
tempt to live as rich people do, when a fam
lily is poor, is not only a sham and cheat
but it makes the head of such family a hope
less slave and drudge, and absolutely per-
petuates the poverty so sedulously sought to
be concealed. aa
We are, with few exceptions, all poor
alike in the South. Let us not be ashamed
Of it, and not commit the folly of increasing
and continuing it by contemplate shifts to
hide it Tt is an evil, but the way to con-
quer, it is to look it the face /; to 60 to
work, and to practice economy. If all that
an over-worked father makes is consumed
in supporting sons in idleness and daughters
in all the extravaganza of fashionable dress
ing and display, what earthly prospect will
there be of an improvementin circumstances?
If the over-worked head of the family lives
under all his burdens, he lives to see in
creasing helplessness all around him in that
family which ought to be a source Of COM
fort to him. If he dies, victim to- his
heavy burdens, he leaves behind him sons
unframed to work-possibly Of expensive if
not dissipated habits, and daughters with
out any resources whatever, and miserable
because they cannot continue to keep up the
poor delusion that they are part and parcel
Of the fashionable world
No situation in life can be more calling
than that of poor family striving to hide
its poverty 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 pitiful end they
pass through purgatory. They sacrifice
selfrespect, 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 a
spark of intellect. 1t will, if it becomes
prevalent among US, be more disastrous
even than the war was. 1t will fasten pow
erty upon us for successive generations and
make us set of social cheats and humbugs
If thoughtlcss boys and giddy 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 al
lowed to have their way. They should be
controlled. The boys should be brought up
with the idea that life has its serious duties
and responsibilities, and that chief among
them is the courage to work and the girls
should be taught that they cease to be the
ornaments Of domestic life when they sacri-
fee every thing to fashion and empty show.
Real gentility is something higher and
nobler than mere fashion and genteel pov-
erty is far more respectable than the vulgar
snobbery that so many weak minded and
white blooded people cultivate all their lives
long. -.s.sa
It will be an evil day for Virginia when
| she becomes prey to snobbery. The high
repute in which she has SO long been held
was the result of the solid virtues and the
true refinement of her men and women
Mere fashion had nothing to do with it,
Her position'will be any thing but proud
one when she has to point to the puppets
Of fashion as her best claims to considera
ton. Rich Whag.