The Lake County star., 1877-06-14

A sadder story has not been told for
long while than that of the mother
and daughter who were excluded from
the Shaker settlement at Whitewater,
where they had been for fourteen
years, and after leaving which, and
seeking in vain the means Of liveli-
hood, they, In despair, took poison,
and died In each others arms. The
sadness is not 80 much in their death ;
for to that they were at any time lia-
BILE; and loving each other fOndly, as
they manifestly did, in their voluntary
death they were not divided. But the
mother was at first driven to the Shak-
er community fourteen years ago, with
her little girl, because she had been
deserted by the father of her child, to
whom she had not been married. She
had weakly yielded to the impulse Of
nature without fortifying herself by q
legal claim upon the father of her
child, and the world, instead OF treat
ing her tenderly and helping her,
turned Its back upon her and told her
that she and the child she had borne
were fit only to starve or to live in q
county poor house. After fourteen
years of the cold, colOrless, and unnat-
ural life of the Shakers, the daughter
showed that she was not an abstrac-
ton or forked radish, and behaved
like q woman, perhaps not prudent
one, to the young men of the commu-
nifty. She was told that such behavior
was only fit for the worlds people,
and that she and her daughter must
go. But the worlds people had driv-
en- out the mother herself upon some
thing such grounds years before; and
now when she came back she was met
by the same stony front.
Let us not be misunderstood we are
not justifying the mothers conduct.
We pass that point by without consid-
Grafton. But the point remains that
for an error, which, however great,
was in the course Of nature, the moth
er became an outcast, and that for in
discretion, also in the course of nature,
on the daughters part, both afterward
were turned away from the Shaker
community; and then they found the
world so hard, and life in Il 90 bitter,
that, although one was still In the
prime of life and the other in Its early
morning, they chose rather death to-
gether. They might have been base
and unnatural, hard hearted, nialic-
ious, slanderous, revengeful, covetous,
grasping, utterly regardless Of the
happiness and, within the law,
of the rights of others, the mother
might not have loved her child, the
child might not have loved her moth.
er. and yet the world would not have
driven her to the Shakers. and the
Shakers would not have driven them
out into the world again to die. It Is
an old story, we do not hesitate to say
an old wrong, Of which every man and
woman with an unperverted heart
admits the cruelty in the abstract, but
of which the collective world Is always
ready to be guilty. A woman who
"gets husband" no matter by what
base arts or design, is received !"
woman who gives the world q child
otherwise than according to law is cast
out, often by those who are not worthy
to touch the hem Of her garment. It
is not necessary to justify women who
err in this way before oondemning
the pharisaic righteousness which
stones them into despair. "Neither do
I condemn thee. Go and sin no more.n
The GdIday for June.