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BE YOU A LADY?

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 7, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 1.

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BE YOU A LADY?

As a young lady walked hurriedly down State Street on a bleak November day, her attention was attracted to a deformed boy coming towards her, carrying several bundles. He was thinly clad, twisted his limbs most strangely as he walked, and looked before him with a vacant stare. Just before the cripple reached the brisk pedestrian he stumbled, thus dropping one bundle, which broke and emptied a string of sausages on the sidewalk.
The richly-dressed ladies (?) near by held back their silken skirts and whispered quite audibly, “How horrid!” while several who passed by, amused by the boy’s looks and blank dismay, gave vent to their feelings in a half-suppressed laugh, and then went on, without taking any further interest.
All this increased the boy’s embarrassment. He stopped to pick up the sausages only to let fall another parcel, when in despair he stood and looked at his lost spoils. In an instant the bright-faced stranger stepped to the boy’s side, and in a tone of thorough kindness said:—
“Let me hold those other bundles while you pick up what you have lost.”
In dumb astonishment the cripple handed all he held to the young Samaritan, and devoted himself to securing his cherished sausages. When those were again strongly tied in the coarse, torn wrapper, her skilful hands replaced the parcels on his scrawny arms, as she bestowed on him a smile of encouragement, and said:—
“I hope you haven’t far to go.”
The poor fellow seemed scarcely to hear the girl’s pleasant words; but looking at her with the same vacant stare, he said:—
“Be you a lady?”
“I hope so; I try to be,” was the surprised response.
“I was kind a hoping you wasn’t.”
“Why?” asked the listener, with her curiosity quite aroused.
“’Cause I’ve seen as called themselves ladies, but they never spoke kind and pleasant to me, ’cepting to grand uns. I guess there’s two kinds—them as thinks they’s ladies and isn’t, and them as what tries to be and is.”—Anon.