| Show the deep disgrace of being useful alma scraine is the daughter of reasonably w ell to do nebraska people who sent her to omaha to study music for winch she had talent alic grew in musical skill and AVIS to the homes of her fellow students until etwas discovered that alma vine wag tiding over a scarcity of funds by working for wages and the use of a piano in a private family in omaha and then those daughters of western republicans and democrats gave the world a proof of the disgrace it lias become even in alic laboring w cst to be useful they dropped her from their cibit ing lists they cut glicr with all the cruelty of girl barbarism they objected to her contaminating presence in alie studio and alio music master for self protection told glicr and asked glicr to come at times when chef were not there then alma gac her demonstration of the awful thing society is prone to deem the crime of usefulness eliat ia the poor girl went mad actually insane ind between spells of destroying the written music improvising on the piano declaring that she was a musician not bac raved and babbled and finally went to the state insane asylum pronounced incurable so the story goes of a life ruined by alie consciousness of crime alie crime of being useful there is not one american family in a million which n even one generation removed from shirt sleeves and kitchen apron sae among southerners and they arc returning to alie regalia of labor wo as a people are descended from the poorest of european peasantry the lime of toil is in our the weight of labor in our bista and thu bommon bouse of labor should bo in our brains it is not aristocratic blood nor arpud descent that makes us such snobs and fools and aads cads and toadies as we must bo to rear girls that would anyo a fellow student crazy with scorn for her serving it is it mut be that conscious of our own origin and ashamed of it wo drive ourselves to a hostility against social equality that people of descent from real gentility would not fed wo have no capital in society save what we ourselves have scraped together in one gencia tion and if we lose that by association with girls we loso all in descent we arc so near bankrupt that wo must be exclusive clu sive or the world will suspect I 1 suspect 1 why the world knows that those girls and alic same would have been true in any other american city aro themselves the daughters or granddaughters of women who worked in kitchens and scrubbed and mopped and washed and did it for wages if they got the chance the sad tiling is that even in the democratic west the virtues of snobbery seems to have gone so deep for every step along this aristocrat road will have to be retraced in coming to the day when all will serve and when the ones who refuse to sano will be the outcast and despised globe silver belt |
