The Washington herald., 1912-08-16
NO PLEASURE In
ILL-G0TTEN GAINS
Yet Folk Sacrifice Honor in Lust
for Gold.
BY Frances Sha Her.

In our dreams for the future perhaps
most of us See a little, or big, pile of
gold ahead, just for the freedom II
brings.
But IN our dreams we never drift to
the land where nothing counts, but
money and where folk will sell them
selves very cheap for the sake Of few
hundred or few>~or many thousands
c. dollars.
And can you understand how men and
women in their waking hours and in
their daily lives. will forget everything.
do anything, however great the dis
honor, Ii only at the end there is little
more money to their credit?
When the day is over, do they lie
down in peace, unmindful of the injustice
they have wrought. undisturbed by the
unfairness, forgetting the unsavory rep
utation they are weaving for them
selves?
Perhaps they do not realize the great
price they pay-and perhaps they do not
care.
A Sordid story.
1t happened awhile ago that wom-
al found herself approaching the down.
ward scale of life, with funds rapidly
melting away, no close kinfolk TO turn
to. apparently nothing but grayness
ahead There were semi-distant kinfolk,
but 1t is only an occasional man or wom-
an who is willing to step in that kind
OF a breach. But, happily for her. there
was one ready to help. The years went
along, the one helping all the while. but
none other proffering even an occasional
lift along the way. The woman had a
small insurance which years ago had
been made payable to another Of her
kindred, but it CHANGED to be one who
liked money too well to part with 1t:
and there was no help from that di-
rection. At last the end came. when
ali that any one could do was to help
wipe out the little Indebtedness Incl
dent upon her brief illness.
And again il was just the one who
came to the rescue and stood by until
there was nothing more to do.
The little insurance? Not a penny of
IL was turned over. Instead. the bene-
ficiary was on hand to take the few per-
sonaI effects she considered worth while.
TugEcd with Money Mark.
life was recited, 1t was so tagged all
over with the sordid money-mark, was
SO cheap, so revealing of the under side
of character, that one wondered at a
makeup willing to pay so much for SO
little.
One wondered. too, If she never count
ed the price at all, and If there was no
aftermath when in the long night hours
she reviewed that bit Of personal his
tory. For the only honorable way is
quite clear to one who looks with eyes
unblinded by the strange mist that
money put before them.
The story comes with names barred
out, and one is glad, because 1t will be
he ka
the more beautiful pictures of humanity
that, happily, are very frequent II we
look about bit.
As one thinks of bigger transactions,
II is hard to understand what pleasure
or pride comes to men who pile up great
estates by systematically getting the
letter of folk with whom they deal
They live with the lure of gold shut
ting them away from all that is true
Other men see the gold grow under
their hands, but when they speak of
the methods that won that gold. it is
tc condemn. They look at the beauti-
ful homes the gold erects, but not with
a particle of envy, for they remember
the price.
No Pleasure in Such Legacies.
And does it not seem a pity that any
one can become so welded to money
that he ceases to care for the esteem
of his fellow-man and grows Indifferent
to the methods which make his dollars
multiply at the expense of others?
And when the time comes that his
life is over and his wealth passes into
other hands, do you fancy they enjoy
IL, knowing the crooked transactions,
which were kept within the legal linn
its. but which left honor and justice
quite out of the count?
One of the finest legacies a man can
leave is the record of life of honor;
and when widow, a son. or daughter
Is beQueathed property which by every