Drusilla with a Million — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Drusilla with a Million
John Stuart Mill · en
"No, of course not; but I like to hear about it. And I been a studyin'
a lot about that young man,--I am sure he was young or he wouldn't have
had the courage to write me; it's only the young who have the courage
to _try_."
"I call it _nerve_," said Daphne scornfully; "plain _nerve_."
"Yes, perhaps it is. But I was thinkin' about this young man who has
got a feelin' inside of him that he could say somethin' that would make
the world better, and he tries, then he's got to go to an office or
somewhere and perhaps count rolls of cloth, or he may be a newspaper
man who has to write stories of murders and divorces and--and--things
like that, when beautiful things is just a chokin' him."
She was silent for a moment.
"It's an awful thing to be poor, Daphne--real poor. Yet--" she said
musingly, "even when you're real poor you can always find somethin' to
give. Like Mis' Sweet. Did I ever tell you about Mis' Sweet? She lived
in our village and she was mortal poor all her life. When her husband
lived he didn't do no more work than he had to and she had to git along
as best she could, and then when he died she lived with her son, who
was so mean and stingy that he made her go to bed at dark so's she
wouldn't burn kerosene. She was so poor that she never had cookies or
cakes to send her neighbors, and it kind o' cut her, because in the
country we was always sendin' some little thing we'd been bakin' to
each other, because that's about the only kind of presents country
women can make to each other, somethin' they make themselves.
"So Mis' Sweet felt kind o' bad that she couldn't make no return. But,
as I says, one ain't never too poor but that they kin give something.
Now Mis' Sweet and nothin' pretty in her house, and never saw much that
was beautiful, but she had beautiful thoughts inside, and she loved the
flowers and things that grew around her.