A friend told me of a poor man who had sent his son to school in the
city. One day the father was hauling some wood into the city, perhaps
to pay his boy's bills. The young man was walking down the street with
two of his school friends, all dressed in the very height of fashion.
His father saw him, and was so glad that he left his wood, and went to
the sidewalk to speak to him. But the boy was ashamed of his father,
who had on his old working clothes, and spurned him, and said:
"I don't know you."
Will such a young man ever amount to anything? Never!
There was a very promising young man in my Sunday-school in Chicago.
His father was a confirmed drunkard, and his mother took in washing to
educate her four children. This was her eldest son, and I thought that
he was going to redeem the whole family. But one day a thing happened
that made him go down in my estimation.
The boy was in the high school, and was a very bright scholar. One day
he stood with his mother at the cottage door--it was a poor house, but
she could not pay for their schooling and feed and clothe her children
and hire a very good house too out of her earnings. When they were
talking a young man from the high school came up the street, and this
boy walked away from his mother. Next day the young man said:
"Who was that I saw you talking to yesterday?"
"Oh, that was my washerwoman."