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LIVES FOR LEAVES. 163
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Tiiiske Are, Perhaps, Few Subjects Conce...
path every day , the sharp , feeble shriek of childhood in our accident wards , have generally one explanation—the mother from
home . Nor must we ju < _Jge too hastily of a practice which , after all , lias
its origin in a grievous necessity ; bearing in mind the fact tliat normal rules are not easily applicable except to a normal system ,
and that , where parts of the social framework are wanting , an . undue pressure must exist somewhere , though ruin threaten the
entire fabric . How may we prescribe for tlie hapless females whose fate depends on one of that class which hangs about tavern _,
doors during the hours of Divine service on the Sabbatli-day—foul creatures , gazing on whom we start as the thought recurs , " In the
Image of God created He him ? " That hale but idle fellow with blackened pipe and filthy , unshaven visage , is a husband and a father : he
is wont to bring home a miserable remnant of his earnings on the Saturday nightandif the wife remonstrate , he will occasionally
, , " make it up with his fist , " and so the poor thing goes out to work at the candle-wicks . That other besotted being seldom works at all ,
and depends for subsistence on the earnings of a consumptive daughter , who works fourteen hours a day—excepting when , as
sometimes happens on a Monday morning , she has to sit patiently in the police officewaiting while cases are disposed of , in which she
, lias no interest , until a loathsome figure is brought up , who will presently want the _Hve shillings she grasps so tightly , seeing that
he was found " drunk and incapable " on Saturday night . As in duty boundshe will advance necessary supplies for the day , and ,
, perhaps , yield to his entreaty for an extra allowance of tobacco-Some worthless young fellow is , may be , taking account of her
industry and good nature , and is speculating on the advantage of haying such an one to " keep him in sickness and in health . "
And so it is that many a " Heroic Noble type womanhood of good , , " —
warped , at length , by the constant and accumulating pressure of
circumstances , and unaided by the counter-forces of education and hih moral example—resorts to the dramand becomes the thing
we g see trailing along , by the policeman , amid the shouts of juvenile taterdemalions and the silent regrets of others who may
remember " what a good girl she used to be . " We talk of the demand for female labor—why the demand is
enormous . What family in humble circumstances does not give forth one or more of its members to meet it ? Where is there a court
or alley which does not expatriate its squalid women and sickly with children the ? condition The secret of our of female most of population the evils we lies dep in lore the in f ac connexion t that so
, many " worse tlian infidel" husbands and fathers abdicate their
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Lives For Leaves. 163
LIVES FOR LEAVES . 163
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), May 1, 1862, page 163, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01051862/page/19/
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