The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-02-21
EVENING CHAT
BY RUTH CAMERON.

Suppose you and a comrade were
caught and hemmed in by the tide on
a rock-bound shore, and your COM
rade should make you stand on his
shoulder, and should help you get
your feet in a niche in the cliffs that
would eventually bring you to safety.
Would you be apt to look down up
on him as a failure because he chose
to save your life instead of his own
What an absolutely absurd ques-
ton, 1 know everyone is thinking.
But listen.
Is a man or woman who chooses to
make another life instead of his own
less fine than the man who saves an
other life instead of his own?
And yet haven't you known young
men and women whose fathers and
mothers have made them stand on
their shoulders and get their feet into
the inches in the cliffs so that they
might climb to success haven't you
known some of these young people,
after they had reached the top, to ac-
tually look down upon and be asham-
ed of the men and women at the bot
tom who chose to make their child
ren's lives instead of their own?
And can you think of any more
hateful sin? 1 can't.
l shall never forget the case of one
girl who graduated from college the
year before 1 did. She came from a
distant city, and all through her col
lSSc COuTS0 none OIL n6r people ndQ
ever come to visit her.
She was a girl who always had nice
clothes and never seemed stinted for
spending money and we had an idea
that she was rather well off.
A few weeks before class day she
told me that she felt very badly be-
cause she did not think any of her
people would be able to come to see
her graduate. Her father and mother
were quite old, she said, and the long
journey was rather more than they
wanted to attempt.
1 realize now that this reluctance
was undoubtedly the result of an at
tempt on her part to dissuade them
from coming.
But the little mother evidently
wouldn't be dissuaded, for after all
she came.
And such a pathetic, shabby little
mother 1 don't believe ever trod the
campus before or since. A home
trimmed straw bonnet with velvet
strings from which the nap had 1ons
since worn off; probably when they
I were attached to their second or third
bonnet; silk dress, shabby with the
dreadful shabbiness of worn out
cheapness. white gloves that I'm sure
were a remnant of her wedding outfit
and shoes that no polishing, however
+ painstaking, had been able to make
half way decent.
Every pathetic detail of her cos
tune stood. I suppose, for some lux
ury that Alice had enjoyed
1 should have thought the girl
would have been af1ame with shame
and remorse for the story that pa
| thetic little womans appearance told
I should have thought that her ev-
cry energy would have been put into
the attempt to make those few days
the proudest and happiest of her
mothers life.
Instead the only shame she seemed
to feel was that her girl friends
should see her mothers poverty.
Instead her every energy went into
the effort to keep her mother as
much out of sight as possible.
/ She was looking down with scorn
on the shoulders that had been will
/ ingly given as her stepping stone to
education and happines, and in the
| giving had been STOPPED into ugliness
Do you ever do things like that?
! You are indignant at the very
| thought.
| Well, al course. I don't mean any
thing quite so abominable. 1 know
/ you couldn't.
| But don't you ever for moment
maybe feel a passing impulse Of
shame or impatience when the father
| or mother does some queer old-fash.
toned thing?
| If you do. suppose the next time
you are inclined that way, you think
of that girl and I'm sure the shame
| for them will turn into a far deeper
/ shame for yourself.
| Teachers Lecture Course
| DR.. George La Mont Cole will Civ,