p. 90 | HIS IDEA OF A LADY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 12, 1892

HIS IDEA OF A LADY.

THE following incident illustrates a poor boy's idea of a true lady. As a young lady walked hurriedly down one of our city streets upon a bleak November day, her attention was attracted to a deformed boy coming toward 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 quick 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 look of blank dismay, gave vent to their feelings in a half

suppressed laugh, and then went on without taking further interest.

All this increased the boy's embarrassment. He stooped 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 said in a tone of thorough kindness:—

"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 these were again strongly tied in the coarse, torn paper, her skillful 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 young fellow seemed scarcely to hear the girl's pleasant words, but, looking at her with the same vacant stare, he asked:—

"Be you a lady?"

"I hope so; I try to be," was the surprised response.

"I was kind of hoping you wasn't."

"Why?" asked the listener, with curiosity quite aroused.

"'Cause I've seen such as call themselves ladies, but they never spoke kind and pleasant like, 'cepting to grand uns. I guess there is two kinds—them as thinks they's ladies and isn't, and them as what tries to be and is."—Selected.