GLASS RUBIES.

Waikato Times, Volume IV, Issue 207, 6 September 1873, Page 2

GLASS RUBIES.

Iv tha case at • woman now in the Tombs on a charge of robbery, the reporters call attention to her efforts to gain her liviag by honest means, among which was the study of medicine with a view to practicing. Finding these fail, aha was driven, we are told, " by absolute necessity, to her last course, that of entering different houses as a ohambermaid and robbing her employers. She is a pretty said educated woman, and deserves the coinsidsration of a philanthropist rather than the police." Which may be all hue enough, although chambermaids in such families as she served, are generally supposed to earn a sufficient livelihood without the necessity of stealing, and even to have time enough for th» moderate pursuit of medical knowledge under difficulties. We have no doubt, however, that tliit girl is a fit subject for the consideration of the philanthropist ather thatv the police, aud the more fit because she has beauty and education, or whnt passes for botli in the eyes of the vulgar. Of all types of wretchedness that ask for- aid in this city, the most pitiable and nearest akin to crime is that shabby gentility which asks it most seldom. The heggar clamours at the door of the soup-hoase. is rather ¥«in of her skinny neck and filthy hands ; or if she be a street beggar, her raga are an indispensable park of her capital. But to a young girl hk • this gentle burglar, with a face- which makes her tliink herself the equal -of every woman who drives past her in her carriage, with enough smattering of knowledge to. make her attempt or chatter about attempting the r£lt of a w >man-doctor, with not sense enough to do honest work and. lake honest pay for it — what misery and temptation lie in < every shabby garment and social slight. There are thou~ snnrUand tens of thousands of such women- in New York and La every city and town through the country. It is from, t'teir ranks, not irom those of the beggar women, that tho steady supply comes to fill our brothels and the wards set a.iart in our gaols for female sharpers and thieves. We do not mean to argue from this that beauty ©r education, however coarse or poor in quality, is to blame, or to put a premium on rags or dirt. The fault lies quite apart from these. Yesterday we saw a middle-aged woman, •PP»^ rently the wife of a respectable mechanic, in a sleazy, ruffled silk and a hat piled, high with Spring, roses, stop as she passed an alley, and, glancing hastily around through the gathering twilight, pick up two or three pieces of wood and >. hiding them under her shawl, go strutting, and 1 swelling on her way. Thert was no guilt, surely, in the fireless grate at home, nor in the genteel woman, picking up sticks if she needed them like any ungenteel beggar. But the beruffled gown, and the red flowers.? All over the country, in town or iarm-houses, there are symptoms of the same disease — the lever of a most puerile, mean ambition — the effort to cope with the map wio ranks just above us in the incomelist, and if we cannot cope to imitate. If the great man of the village comes to New York and envies his friend'iJßer~ sian rugs, which he cannot buy, he hies home with a c»fa Turkey carpet, and »U bjs poorer neighbours throw »slu«. their rag carpets which their mother* cut and wove, and. cover their floors with painted Brussels, which is a flnffj,. dirty rag at the end of a year, and has carried away with its. bright colours their self-respect and their, money. Look at the crowd of shop-girls filling the street cars at seven in themorning, and, for one that is neatk and plainly dressed as a. lady would be at her work, you win find a dozen with frayed and dirty skirts, while the head which shows above th©couwter is heaped high with curls and braids, and heavy ear- Arings of imitation pearls or glass rubies dangle in the »wn. Every class of American society has caught the factitious spier dour of glass rubies : — sham, glitter,, noise, instead of reality,, truth, and quiet. Fiak, who being dead, yet speaks as the melodramatic type of a large and melodramatic chu» -fl of American men, might, with his financial ability and good feeling, have risen from his pedlar's waggon to the first rank ~ among men, instead of lying dead a murdered thief to-day 4ft i had it not been for the hankering after sham, liveries and f gold harness, and the follies and crimes they signify. Fisk'a-—-game goes bravely on. everywhere, and the end is the same in. kind if not in degree. At the worst, prison, the brothel, the gallows. At best, fathers and mothers toil and stint themselves to dress and push their children on to a social platform for which they have no qualification but dress and pushing. Young men will not marry because they cannot afford tosupport a wardrobe and house, although they might a wife ; _« or if married, the wife soon discovers that children make the — load altogether too heavy, and there ends the tale. Is there any better text for our preachers to-morrow than this of ows to-day ?