TRUE DIGNITY.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXVII, Issue 4203, 2 February 1871, Page 3

TRUE DIGNITY.

To the Editor of the Daily Southern Cross. Sir,— ln Auckland it is manly to get into debt, and manly to sneak out of paying your debts aa best you can. A religious cloak pays •well— hides a multitude of sins. All honour to the few men who have bravely stood their ground amid the crash of mere reckless speculators, who never can be content with doing well, who have in consequence earned for themselves well-merited contempt. If wam&n is ta take field with man, let her ace that sue brings to it a purer code of morals. If she claims to work like a man, let her pay like a man j never let her whine about the penalty of running into debt : she should scorn to plead sex by way of excuse for either debt or penalty. It is a low, mean, base pride that suffers a so-called refinement of taste to run one into debt. No soul has a right to indulge a cultivated taste at the expense of other people : it is only make-believe ladies who presume to do so. I would turn my dress inside out and upside down, work my fingers to the bone, live on "potatoes and point" till the sod covered me, ere I would stoop to so mean, so unladylike a thing as to ask credit of butcher, baker, draper, or grocer, without a sure and certain hope of paying for what I asked. I have known what debt is. To honourable natures there is not a greater evil— such natures can dignify poverty but never be degraded by it. In very lowly life wo sometimes see women of queenly natures to whom trickery and fraud are impossible; but the noblest queen is a cultivated woman who works willingly with her hands at so-called meanest drudgery, in order to keep her soul unsullied by debt. 0 ! how well such women have borne the brunt of misfortune! Quietly accepting their lowlier Jot with such exquisite grace, they have dignified and exalted their daily toil so well, so unconsciously doing their part, you have been DK&sfefssa«& to wnv^ksaa. Vax«. gems isv &ass& setting, though print dress and polished boards be all their adornment, and to question whether they could ever have so graced a loftier atation. AH the charm ia in the sort of women they are in themselves. I hold it to be more noble and ladylike to teach "Tom, Dick, and Harry," at a shilling a-week each, than to launch out into an expensive educational establishment, if you make your start in debt. It is a pity that all women of character who have false notions of the requirements of refined taste should not have them cured by a short lodgment in gaol — then help to give a healthier tone to society. Yes, lam sure we can all do more and better by appreciating right efforts to obtain an honest living than by any amount of alms-giving. We know not yet how to give the cup of cold water. It is not giving money— no, no, something better than money. < A Woman.