A CONVERTED PURSE by Louise Manning Hodgkins

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 29, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 51.

A CONVERTED PURSE.

By Louise Manning Hodgkins

[An incident from life.]

BY LOUISE MANNING HODGKINS.

"CERTAINLY. I am grateful to you for asking me. Put me down for $25."

A look of pleased surprise passed over the solicitor's face, succeeded by another of perplexity, for it happened that he knew that his friend had precisely the same salary as he, and that $25 was a generous fraction of his month's income.

"Oh, that's more than we expect, Frank,—and than you can afford, too, I fear!" he added, with the freedom of a comrade.

"Oh, no! Let me tell you how it is, Jack. You know I turned right about face when I became a Christian, last winter; and I resolved at the start not to enter into junior partnership with the world, and a senior partnership with the church.

"You knew my habits. I was not an inordinate smoker. Three cigars a day, with a treat to the fellows now and then, cut off, reduced my expenses $100 a year. Then I had a careless fashion, ruinous to my digestion, of adding a bottle of claret, or some fancy, indigestible pudding or cream, at least twice a week, to a wholesome lunch. Looked squarely in the face, and given its right name, it was an indulgence of unlawful appetite; so I made $75 a year by stopping that. Sunday headaches, too, went at the same time.

"One day I was looking over my neckties to find some particular color, and I found I had thirty-seven, with at least ten scarf pins. That made me run through my accounts next day—they weren't very well kept, but I guessed as nearly as I could—to see what there was in my wardrobe that would leave me better dressed, from a Christian and artistic point of view, too, for that matter, if I never wore it again; and I am ashamed to say I found I had $150 worth of dry goods on hand that was the price, not of good taste, but mere caprice.

"Now I don't propose to submit to a taxation in behalf of my weaknesses and vices, and be niggardly with the church I've promised before God and man to support and increase.

"There, you have it all. I spent over $300 a year, you see, in the service of appetite and fashion, for things that made me less a man. I've transferred that mortgage; yes, I can

afford easily that $25, especially when it is to rescue some other fellow deeper in than I was. Come to think of it, make it thirty. The other five is a thank offering."—Sunday School Times.