Year: 1869




virtuous Ccrnelia, and poets and
painters have for centuries con-
tended who should best tell the
touching and noble story. But of
what use are the classics :? They
are, with all their fables, to use the
terse and vigorous language of the
day, ''played out" We Americans
make classics to order, and i'm
prove on the old models. There is
nothing, for example, in all Grecian
or Roman history so beautiful as
that story which is vibrating like
ray of silver light through all the
journals of the country of daugh-
ter of the great Vanderbilt teaching
her child the darning- stitch upon an
old pair Of stockings, illustrating
the action with the beautiful and
original remark that "There is no
knowing what we may any Of US
come to !'' Need we go back to
Rome for virtue, or Sparta for
heroism, when hore in our every day
life we have such an example as
this of republican simplicity and
maternal wisdom? How touching
the picture! The little child, with
its tiny left fist concealed in prob
ably huge, possibly dirty, and GER
tainly worn out stocking, while the
noble, and, of course. beautiful
young mother, whose long eye
lashes shade her cheeks and whose
wreath of dark and wavy tresses
cluster over her fair brow, leans for
ward to guide that other little hand
in the intricacies of the darn
What rebuke to American moth
ers! Not only to those who per-
NIT the holes in their own and their
children's stockings to go unmend
ed, but to those whose souls can
rot condescend to darns. The
Wall street wealth of the great
Commodore may take to itself wings.
but the tender fee5 of this little pa
trician will never bleed for want of
properly mended stockings. "God
save our aristocracy," was the song
of an English poet; how much
more reason have we to ask bless
ing on the aristocracy of our own
beloved country when they s1oop to
inculcate such frugality and humili-
ty as this.


There may be. cynical persons
who will see in this incident some
thing of that pride which apes hui
mility, but they are only worthy OF
the severest rebuke. Probably Com
modore Vanderbilt went not only
without darned stockings, but with
out any stockings at all, and also
without shoes, in all the earlier
years of his life; and possibly his
children, in their younger days
may have been equally destitute OF
these comfortable articles of appa
rel. 1t is well known that all o.
that ilk have not been equally sue
cessful with the Commodore him
self in worldly prosperity, and man,
who bear that well-known name
still go barefoot whenever the sea
son permits, and sometimes, nc
doubt, when bare feet are little
out Of season. 1t is only becomius
to rise to the exigeDcies of new
condition, to accept with graceful
ease the responsibilities of wealth


and set to those who are still indi


gent that example Of humility
which, only proper in the poor, be
comes noble in the rich. Wha
can be more appropriate, then, il
those who have no fear of eve


again coming under the bare foo


aispensation, than to remind al
who still tread that hard and thorny
way that the fortunate are bound tt
the unfortunate by common bono
of sympathy, and do not forget tha
) H.darned stockings, OF, indeed, stock
ings of any sort, are a good thin:
to have in the house? We hav'
every reason to be confident Of tn,


future of the republic when the ricl
and the great are thus mindful o
public and private morality, ant
condescend to teach lesson of hu
mility and darning.- Chicago Iri


bune