Mrs. Mary A. Wright, a veteran Sunday-school teacher of New Jersey,
relates an odd story of human interest taken from personal observation.
I went to see a beautiful new farmhouse near Fort Wayne, Iowa. A
friend who accompanied me explained that the owner, a prosperous
ranchman, had been forty years building it. He had started life
in a small home of logs--but in his early days had dreamed of
a larger and better home for himself and family. Every tree he
saw that struck his fancy he cut down and hewed into lumber
so that when he was finally ready to erect his mansion he had
all the seasoned material at hand. The new home was at last
completed and beautifully finished upon the interior in polished
natural woods. There were soft carpets for the floors, and
rich furnishings; a bath-room, steam heat, and other modern
conveniences.
That was several years before my visit, but I learned that,
altho surrounded by all of this luxury, the farmer and his
family lived in the basement. He had spent the best years of his
life striving to build such a beautiful home, but, after getting
it, he thought it too good to use and the family kept it to look
at. The farmer and his family washed at the old pump in the
yard while the costly tiled bath-room, with hot and cold water
equipment, stood idle. They drank out of tin cups and ate off of
cracked earthenware in their humble abode in the basement, while
fine cut-glass and delicate china pieces reposed undisturbed in
china-closets in the elegantly furnished dining-room up-stairs.
All the members of the family entered into the spirit of
“keeping the house looking nice,” and they kept it so nice
that the wife and mother who had worn out her life in helping
to secure the luxuries that she afterward thought too good to
enjoy, begged to be allowed to die on a straw mattress in the
cellar rather than muss the clean linen in the bed-chambers
above.
How much that is like some people. They are living in life’s basement,
carefully cherishing the higher and nobler things to look at and show
their friends, when they might experience life’s fullest joys and
privileges for the choosing.
(2519)
=Prize=--See DISCOVERY, FORTUNATE.