The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1900-02-09
MY CALEND AR.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
MY CALENDAR.
In January, with its New Year bright,
In February, with its mantle white;
In March, so clustering with whistle shrill,
IN April, verdure clothing vale and hill.
In leafy June pertaining all the air,
In hot July, when shelter cool we seek,
In August we would climb the mountain
In sweet September. bringing harvest treas
In gay October, with its woodland pleas
In sad November, with its aspect drear,
III bright December, with glad Christmas
In every Say year. and month, and week, and
love thee more than words can ever say.
julia NJ. Swift.
THE LACK OF APPRECIATION.
l wish somebody would start school
for the cultivation of old-fashioned vir-
tues, and begin by trying to revive the
lost art of gratitude. Tc my mind there
is no other fault of our day so unlovely
as the lack of appreciation that we en-
counter everywhere. We have gotten
into the way of taking everything for
granted, and OF accepting favors as if
they were merely slight and unworthy
tribute to our own charms and merits.
Even in the matter of thanks we are as
stingy and niggardly as if, like the her
ONE of the fairy tale, our lips dropped
diamonds and rubies instead of words,
and we were afraid OF Delng robbed.
Of course when we do Il kindly thing
we do not perform it in the hope of re-
ward. nor do we care to have our virtues
unduly exploited, but it is one thing to
have trumpet sounded in your praise,
and another to have everything received
in dead silence. Yet the whole world
hungers and thirsts for appreciation. and
to realize the truth of this We have only
to bring it home to ourselves and recall
how our hearts warmed under the sum
shine of little gratitude and under
standing of the things we had done, and
the sacrifices We had made for someone
else.
1t is pleasure we are seldom permitted
to enjoy. What we are intimatei y ac-
Quainted with is the brutal rudeness of
people who take our efforts in their be-
half as matter of course. and think it
entirely too much trouble to manifest the
slightest appreciation of it. Take the
matter Of entertaining, for instance. The
world over an invitation has been consid-
Il
would draw some sort of Acknowledge
ment out of clam, vet every season the
land is full of the walls of hoStesses who
have received no reply to their invita-
lions and do not know whether to expect
forty guests or 400. Nor does the lack
of appreciation stop there. The majority
of guests nowadays seem to regard your
house as merely affording picturesque
background for their tlirtations, or il con-
,loatin mi, thpr friends
and such a thing as having any obliga-
tons to you does not enter their heads.
Men are the particular aggresSorS III this
line. The hostess who can induce the
young fellows who line her
walls ut her balls and eat her salads and
drink her champagne. to dance or pay
any attention to an ugly girl when there
is a pretty one i'll sight. is Il diplomat and
Il general who deserves recognition at
himself as being under any OBJ
legations for an invitation, he thinks that
he has conferred il favor by going for
which his hostess should be humbly
grateful. Only last winter | heard a
beardlesS STRIPPING calmly announce that
he never called at houses where he was
unless there were girls there.
What's the use?''' he cynically re-
marked. They can't give parties with it
Jul lueN. LEY II DCuiI\ " dsN uo. VI
my part, l should like to see the women
who entertain form an lronclad trust and
boycott every man who failed to show
decent appreciation of the cOurtesies
shown him.
But men are not the only ones lacking
in appreciation. There isn't one woman
in 1000 who hesitates to ask Il favor Of
you. and there is about one in ten who
ever thinks of making any return for it.,
IL, lie, InD1S Thoro &c NrS \ who
writes you from New York or Chicago,
asking you to give her letter of intro
duction to some charming friends of
yours. Being good-natured, you comply.
and they shoW@her all sorts of attentions
OH your account. One would think that
her first impulse would he to sit down and
write you note teeming with gratitude,
stead, she waits until she gets home, and
if you happen to meet her she casually
mentions that she saw .:our friends. the
rs, and that's all the thanks you ever
get from her.
But the very tragedy of the lack Of
appreciation manifests itself in the do
nestle circle. l honestly believe that.
while we are ransacking heaven and
earth for some cure for the domestic
troubles we see all about u.s. it lies in
the simple expedient of people showing
some appreciation and some gratitude for
the daily toll and sacrifice of those about
them. l have known plenty of women
whose whole married life was nothing
short Of slavery. who We're goaded on
from day to day and year to year by hard
and relentless poverty. who never had
one hour that was free from anxiety and
care, and who never knew what it was
to crafty Il longing for anything pretty
or dainty. but | never knew one who CON
sidered herself ill-used or her lot hard. if
she was sustained by the loving apprecia-
ton of her husband I remember once
saying to such woman that it must be
hard for her to always wear shabby
clothes when she had been used. in he:
youth. to walk in silk attire. ''Ah.' she
dress me like Il princess if he could, and
to know that is better than to have any
thing that money could buy Why, tho
other day he kissed my hand and a tear
rel! on it, because it had grown hard and
callons working for him, and it seemed to
me that it was brighter and more bcauti-
full than diamond" 1t is solemn fact,
based on God knows what strange con,
tradlction of the feminine heart, that if
you give a woman appreciation You need
give her precious little else, and she vii!
still consider herself blessed among her
sex, and have frequently wondered that
husbands didn't oftener indulge in it Just
as good financial investment
A woman errs equally in taking it toe
much for granted that man is glad to
spend his life. toiling for her, and that
no word of acknowledgment is needed to
snow that she understands and appre-
rates all his sacrifices.
There are servants whose mistresses
never give a word of praise for good
work done, and children who insensibly
[eel that nobody appreciates them at
home, and that their little efforts at bet
er manners and harder study are wasted.
It ls all terrible mistake, born of our
and the sooner we correct
the better. There is no quality better
worth woman's cultivation than the
'lft of appreciation. 1t is the magic that
obs daily toll of it's hardness and takes
ne bitterness out of life and fills it with
Weetness and light.-Dorothy Dix in
New Orleans Picayune.
EFT THE GIRLS BUYTHEIR OWN
CLOTHES.
IT girls parents are poor, and she
wishes to 60 to work early to help them,
is wrong for her parents to take all her
earnings every week 80 il 10 .ustrr,o.,