A True Daughter | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Jun 18, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 24.

A True Daughter.

AN intelligent girl of our acquaintance half wished, not long since, when she came home from the boarding-school in which she had been well trained in all the "ologies," that she did not know the English language any better than her parents.

"If he hain't got nothin' of his own," were the words she heard. How they jarred upon her ear! They made her hot and cold at once. Had her father's language always been as bad as this? Of course it must have been, only she did not notice it before those years at boarding-school, during which she had made friends with the queen's English. "If he hain't got nothin' of his own," her father was saying, with reference to a young man who aspired to be his son-in-law.

"He has, at least, a good education," Margaret suggested, with some spirit.

"Yes, yes; but eddication ain't all. I've known college-learnt men that had hard pullin' to get their bread and butter. But ef you like him, Peggy, why, I hain't worked all my life without gettin' somethin' ahead to help you along, ef a pinch comes."

Margaret's heart reproached her, then. She looked at the two true-hearted old people who were her parents, and who sat there before her. Yes, that was what they had been doing all their lives. They might have read and have given time and have become more intelligent—only they had chosen this other thing: chosen to work for her, that she might have what they had lacked in their young days; that she might be well taught, and wear soft raiment, and keep her hands white and shapely!

And she—she who had never sacrificed one thing for anybody; who had grown like a fruitless flower in the warm sunshine—she, indeed, had been impatient with their verbs, and scornful of their double negatives, and secretly ashamed of them before her school-fellows.

Something seemed to choke her at the thought, and with moistened eyes she went up to them and tenderly kissed first one and then the other, and said, gently, "It shall be as you say, father. If you think Harry and I ought not to marry without more money, we will wait. It shall be just as you wish."

"No, I don't want that," he replied. "I guess you'll have your way now; you pretty much always have; but you're a good girl, Peggy, and I'm willin' to please you."

And so he was; and it is right that parents should make life larger and better for the children God has given them, but oh the pity of it, when to grow in knowledge must be to grow away from home!—Youth's Companion.