Sturgis advertiser. (Sturgis, Dakota [S.D.]) 1887-1???, 1889-04-27
INFLUENCE or THINGs.
i story Win die uorat o,,.ftsed.

\ story With fhe Moral omitted.
There was once lady, sober in mind
and sedate in manner, whose plain dress
exactly represented her desire to be in
conspicuous, to do good, to improve
every day or her life in actions that
should benefit her kind. She was seri-
GUS person, inclined to improve CONVEX
sation, to the reading of bound books
that cost at least $3.50 Us cents Of
which she gladly contributed to the au-
thor, and she had distaste for the gay
society which was mainly futter Of
ribbons and talk and pretty faces; and
when she meditated, as she did in her
spare moments, her heart was sore over
the frivolity Of life and the emptiness Of
fashion. She longed to make the world
better, and without any priggishness
she set it an example Of simplicity and
sobriety, Of cheerful acquiescence in
plainness and inconspicuousness.
One day..it was in the autumn this
lady had occasion to buy new hat.
From great number offered to her she
selected red one with dull red plume.
It did not agree with the rest Of her APP
parel; it did not fit her apparent char
acter. What impulse led to this selec-
ton she could not explain. She was
not tired of being good, but something
in the jauntiness of the hat and the
color pleased her. If it were tempta-
ton, she did not intend to yield to it,
but she thought she would take the hat
home and try it. Perhaps her nature
felt the need of little warmth. The
hat pleased her still more when she got
it home and put it on and surveyed her
self in the mirror. Indeed, there was a
new expression in her face that cores
pended to the hat. She put it off and
looked at it. There was something al
most humanity winning and temptations
in it. In short, she kept it, and when
she wore it abroad she was not con-
scious of its incongruity to herself or to
her dress, but of the incongruity of the
rest of her apparel to the hat, which
seemed to have sort of intelligence of
is own, at least power of changing
and conforming things to itself. By de-
grees one article after another of the
lady's wardrobe was laid aside, and an
other substituted for it that answered to
the demanding spirit of the hat. In a
little while this plain lady was not plain
any more, but most gorgeously dressed,
and possessed with the desire to be in
the height of the fashion. 1t came to
this, that she had tea-gown made out
of window-c curtain with a famboyant
pattern. Solomon in all his glory would
have been ashamed of himself in her
presence.
But this was not all. Her disposition,
her ideas, her whole life was changed.
She did not any more think of going
about doing good, but Of amusing her
self. She read nothing but stories in
paper covers. In place Of being sedate
and sober-minded, she was frivolous to
excess; she spent most of her time with
women who like to "frivol." She kept
Lent in the most expensive way, SO as
to make the impression upon everybody
that she was better than the EXTREMIST
kind of Lent. From liking the sedatest
company she passed to liking the gayest
society and the most fashionable method
of getting rid Of her time. Nothing
whatever bad happened to her, and she
is now an ornament to society Charles
Dudley Warner, I'M Haape,'s Maga-
zine,