"Send for your daughters to come home, at once. When they arrive,
call another family council. Say to them, 'My dear children, I sent
for you for imperative reasons. I am worn out, in debt, wretchedly
unhappy, disgraced.--I can't live in this way any longer. You alone
can save me. I ask you to abandon, at once, the life you are
leading, and help your mother and myself to bear these burdens. I
ask you to go with me to-morrow morning to the store, let me
discharge both of the clerks, and you become my clerks. My
daughters, if you will do this, we shall all be independent and
happy. Believe me when I tell you, that these tortures are killing
me. While you are all asleep in your beds, your mother and I are
grieving and often weeping over the impending ruin. My children,
will you save us? Your large acquaintance, your education, your
manners, your devotion to our interests, will turn the current in
the right direction.'
"Possibly," I said, "they may hesitate; but I don't believe it. In
any event, it is the right thing to do. If it should turn out that
they draw back, then stand up like an honest, christian man, and
declare, 'I will not live another day such a life of fraud; I will
not ask the jobbers to trust me with another penny's worth; I will
no longer obtain goods under false pretences. If worse comes to
worst, you, my daughters, must do what thousands of young women have
done before you,--go out into the world and earn your own bread.'
"My friend, I have given you the plan, act at once. Your girls will
join you with a whole heart, and, within a year, they will be ten-
fold more happy, and you can live an honest, manly life."
HOW IT TERMINATED.
Of course you all wish to know how it came out. The reason for my
telling you this story, is, that I was made very happy yesterday, on
dropping in at my friend's store, to see, that he had three new
clerks, and, after a warn hand-shaking, I congratulated them, from
the bottom of my heart, on having gone into business. At this moment
the father called me to the rear of the store, where he wished to
consult me about a new window; but all he had to say, was, that I
must not drop a word of my acquaintance with the history of certain
changes.
"All right, my good friend;" but the caution was quite unnecessary.
Of course the public must understand that it was of their own brave
hearts, that they have gone into this thing.
The father dropped in last evening to tell me all about it. He wrung
my hand, laughed, cried, and, in fact, almost went into some of
Fanny's hysterics.
"Oh!" said he, "it's all right. I can see the light. And you don't
know how happy we all are. The girls spend their time in singing
about the house, and asking my forgiveness. It seems to me that we
never knew each other before. Oh! I can see the light now, I can see
the light! Give me one year, and I can shout victory!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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