Katie Robertson : $b A girls story of factory lifeWinslow, Margaret E.
General
Katie Robertson : $b A girls story of factory life
Winslow, Margaret E.
Factories -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
One of these Wadsworth clubs, a class of great, rough, overgrown boys in
a New York mission school, had supported a sick companion for a whole
winter out of the savings of their own scanty earnings. Another, a group
of rich Boston girls, kept three or four families of poor children
constantly dressed in the clothes which they made themselves. A third
had originated the idea of sea-side homes for sick city children.
"Our Do Good Society is to be like one of these," she said; "only we
must have for our motive something higher than just kindness to other
people. We must do good for Jesus' sake; because he does good to us and
because we want to please him by doing good to his other children. And,
boys and girls, we sha'n't be doing it the right way at all, if we are
the least bit proud of what we do and take any glory to ourselves about
it. We can not even think any good thing without the aid of the Holy
Spirit; certainly we can not perform any righteous action. So we must
always remember to ask for his presence, his direction, and his
strength, and in this, as in all our other ways, acknowledge him."
The Do Good Society set in motion a good many other things; for the
younger members, who had more time at their disposal, began to conceive
a passion for performing helpful acts, and they ferreted out cases of
distress which were often far beyond their power to relieve, but which
thus got into the right hands.
For instance, when the children reported the case of the
poverty-stricken Ryans, Miss Eunice set her "tea-party" to work to make
a set of clothes for the unexpected twin-baby, for whom there was no
provision, and sent a strong poor woman, whom her father paid, to take
care of the helpless little ones till some better and more permanent
arrangement could be made. When the boys found Harry Pemberton's mother
without "oven wood," which the strong arms of her unfortunate boy used
to prepare, they set about to gather and cut up enough to last her all
winter; and in doing so made the further discovery that she had neither
tea, sugar, nor flour in the house. This they reported at the next
meeting of the society, and the result was that abundance of provisions
of all kinds found their way into the poor old widow's dwelling, and she
was well cared for the short remainder of her sad life. Even Bertie
Sanderson caught the infectious enthusiasm, and devoted the money sent
by her city aunt to get her a velvet hat and feathers, just like her
cousins, to procuring a warm woolen dress and hood for a little girl in
the neighborhood, who could not go to school without it. She wore her
old felt all winter with content that would have been impossible a year
ago.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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