Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Volume 12, No. 33, December, 1873 by Various
page 83 of 291 (28%)
page 83 of 291 (28%)
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Lively advised.
"I won't go there and wait round like a beggar, and have them ask me a million of prying questions, and all for somebody's old clothes," Mrs. Lively declared. "Now, my dear," her husband remonstrated, "I have been a great deal in the relief-rooms, and I believe there are no unnecessary questions asked--only such as are imperative to prevent imposition." "The things don't belong to them any more than they do to me." "Perhaps not as much. They were sent to the destitute, such as you, so you shouldn't mind asking for your own," the doctor argued. "Think what a mean little story I should have to tell! I do wish you'd bought that house. If we'd lost fifty thousand!--but a few bed-quilts and those old frogs and bugs and dried leaves of yours! The most miserable Irish woman on DeKoven street can tell as big a story of losses as we can." "I'll go to the relief-rooms and get some clothes for you," said the doctor decidedly: "I'm not ashamed." "I won't wear any of the things if you bring them," said Mrs. Lively. "Oh, wife," said the doctor, his face pallid and grieved, "you are wrong, you are wrong. Are you to get no kind of good out of this calamity? Is the chastisement to exasperate only? to make you more perverse, more bitter?" |
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