Pay Tour Small Debts.

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 190, 13 December 1893, Page 2

Pay Tour Small Debts.

A Dunedin paper has the following contrast in its columns : A large house, luxuriously furnished, and situate in a fashionable locality; servants, governess, groom, dog cart, <fee., &c. Every week the lady of the house has her afternoon for receiving visitors; she is elegant and frivolous. Gentleman of the house has friends to dinner twice weekly on an average. He has his clubs to attend to; and, altogether, they both see a good deal of company. One night I heard them talk to each other thus .-—Wife (nervously) : " Oh, Harry, the butcher sent a note this morning to say that if we didn't pay something off, this month, he really couldn't " Husband (reading the evening paper): "Is that so? Oh well ; I must see to it," "And, Harry, the milkman." " Let me see. How , much do we owe him ?" " £14 19s !" "Dear, dear; how in the world^-em— j did it mount up 1 Didn't I tell you not to let these things run on sol" "Then, dear — there is that poor woman, on the flat, who made your shirts so nicely and so cheaply." VOh, let her wait. She can wait. Em— l wish you wouldn't bother me. I have only a little time to myself, and you j must " The other side of the pic- [ ture :— Shanty on the Flat— clean bat bare ; whole air poverty. Seven children — eldest (a boy, twelve years) runs messages for a shop; mother (a widow), mainstay of the family by doing needlework. Enter small boy. "Mother, she says she's very sorry she can't give the money for the shirts to-day, but at the beginning of the month " Mother, aghast, and throwing up her arras : " And we've no coals, and hardly a bite to eat, and it is Saturday night! What shall we do?' Why are things thus ? 0 temporal 0 mores I