THE SWEETS OF ADVERSITY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 15, 9 April 1892, Page 371

THE SWEETS OF ADVERSITY.

Din it ever dawn on you what a consummate fraud Shakespeare was ? How could he ever sit down and write, • Sweet are the uses of adversity?’ The uses of adversity are not sweet at all. Adversity has driven more men to the madhouse and more women to the devil than anything in the world. Bread and cheese and kisses are good for awhile, but the bread begins to be tasteless without butter, the cheese grows mouldy, while a constant diet of kisses does pall on one. I would be willing to bet anything in the world that Mrs Shakespeare didn’t think the uses of adversity were sweet. I would be willing to affirm (I never swear) that she got deadly tired of bread and cheese, and longed for a partridge, a salad, a glass of Burgundy, a mouthful of something sweet, then of course, she might have been glad to have the kisses. I don’t believe poverty is ennobling, and that is the reason that I have an immense amount of respect for men who work themselves out of it and get the good things of life. I think it is in the power of every man who has got even a half of a brain, to get rich if he wants too. What is there ennobling in seeing your children want for things that other people’s children have ? What is there ennobling in wishing for books to improve youiself, for comforts to make yourself stronger, and for all the beautiful things that money will get to make you happier and better? I don’t say money will get everything ; I don’t believe it will, but it will go a very long way toward it. If it is your girl or my girl, or your boy or my boy, who could gain what they desire if they only had the chance and a little money ; sometimes the chance conies to them and the money does not; but if they have the money they can make the chance. I tell you it is not easy to sit down and be poor, and I don’t care if I shock every reader of the divine William all over creation, I say it with intense emphasis and with two lines under it, that * he was an absolute fool ’ when he wrote about the uses of adversity being sweet. If he liked it, it is a pity he didn’t live forever and enjoy it ; nobody else wanted it. In a play now being presented in New York the rich man asks the workingmen not to strike because of his daughter, and there she stands beside him, sweet faced, gentlemannered and refined. • Ine of the men who is asking for more wages throws open a door leading into the mill and calls to his daughter. She conies out, delicate, ill clad, gasping for breath, with a headache that never ends, and asks with fear if she is going to be discharged ; and the man says, ‘Look at my daughter ; I must care for her.’ And then you remember that this is labour and capital facing each other in the form of two women. lam not upholding the so called shouting labour man. lam just saying in my own way that it is not nice to be poor. It is your girl who is sick and delicate, and of whom the doctor says she must be sent where it is warmer, and you haven’t the money to send her. How do you like the uses of adversity ? It is your boy who has gone through all the free schools and whose great desire it is to go to college, that he may become a great man some day, and you haven’t the money to send him. How do you like the uses of adversity ? It is your wife, who, long after the day’s work is done, is mending over the old clothes, freshening up the best ones and trying to see what may be turned, so that the girls will not be ashamed to go among their friends. You think how well she would look in a new gown ; you remember how pretty she was before the cares of daily life made the wrinkles come on her face, and you wish, how you wish, that you could get her a fine warm coat for the winter days, but you haven't the money. How do you like the uses of adversity ? It is your baby, sick, weak, crying, making a pitiful moan because it does not have the proper food. Before it was born its mother was not well nourished and cared for ; you hadn’t the money to do it. How do you like the uses of adversity ?

Get thee gone, Will Shakespeare ! Roam over the country, half beggar, half vagabond. It sounded pretty to write that line, but yon never wrote a greater lie. I have no respect for you, and if your ghost or yourself stood before me I should still say, * The fool s|>eaketh of what he knoweth not.’