An Instructive  

 

            Anecdote

 

          Most young people are very fond of display in dress.  Rings, breastpins, and similar superfluities, are in great demand among them.  We have known a girl to spend a months wages for a single article of this kind, and a young man to run in debt for a cane when he had scarcely clothing enough to appear respectable.  The following story of a successful merchant will show to such how these things look to sensible people.  Said he:

         “I was seventeen years old when I left the country store where I had ‘tended’ for three years, and came to Boston in search of a place.  Anxious, of course, to appear to the best advantage, I spent an unusual amount of time and solitude upon my toilet, and when it was completed, I surveyed my reflection in the glass with no little satisfaction, glancing lastly and approvingly upon a seal ring which embellished my little finger, and my cane was a very pretty affair, which I had purchased with direct reference to this occasion.  My first day’s experience was not encouraging.  I traveled street after street, up one side and down the other, without success.  I fancied, toward the last, that the clerks all knew my business the moment I opened the door, and that they winked ill-naturedly at my discomfiture as I passed out.  But nature endowed me with a good degree of persistency, and the next day I started again.  Toward noon I entered a store where an elderly gentleman was talking with a lady near by the door.  I waited until the visitor had left and then stated my errand.

     “’No sir.’ Was the answer, given in a crisp and decided manner.   Possibly I looked the discouragement I was beginning to feel, for he added in a kindlier tone, ‘Are you good at taking a hint?’"

                    “’I don’t know,’" I answered, and my face flushed painfully.

          “’ What I wish to say is this.’ said he, looking me in the face and smiling at my embarrassment, ‘If I were in want of a clerk, I would not engage a young man who seeking employment with a flashy ring upon his finger, and swinging a cane.’"

       “For a moment, mortified vanity struggled against common sense, but sense got the victory, and I replied, with rather shaky voice, I’m very much obliged to you,’ and then beat a hasty retreat.  As soon as I got out of sight, I slipped the ring into my pocket, and walking rapidly to the Worcester depot.  I left my cane in charge of the baggage-master until called for.’  It is there now, for I aught to know.  At any rate, I never called for it.  That afternoon I obtained a situation with the firm of which I am now a partner.  How much my unfortunate finery had injured my prospects on the previous day I shall never know, but I never think of the old gentleman and his plain-dealing with me, without always feeling, as I told him at the time, ‘very much obliged to him.’”

 

 

REAPING

 

While the years are swiftly passing

As we watch them come and go

Do we realize the maxim

We must reap whate’re we sow?

When the past comes up before us

All our thoughts, our acts and deeds

Shall they glean for us fair roses

Or a harvest bear of weeds?

Are we sowing seeds to blossom?

We shall reap someday,---somewhere

Just what here we have been sowing

Worthless weeds or roses fair.

 

All around us whispering ever

Hear the voice of nature speak

Teaching all the self-same lesson

“As you sow, so shall you reap.”

 

Though there’s pardon for each sinner

In God’s mercy vast and mild

Yet the law that governs Nature

Governs e’en fair nature’s child.

 

 

 

 

 

Vroman