The Bane of a Life Author:Thomas Wright Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI. OVER THE RUBICON. | HEN, some year or two ago, a working man in receipt of parochial relief was summoned to one of the metropolitan county... more » courts for the nonpayment of the fees of his daughter's music-master, the case gave rise to a good deal of astonishment and comment, and was made the basis of the philosophizing of sundry social newspaper leaders of the period. But though certainly a striking case in point, the state of things which it illustrated is by no means so phenomenal as people having no personal knowledge of the working and semi-pauper classes would naturally suppose. Such differences in position and appearance of parents and children living under one roof and dependent upon the same resources, though seldom coming under the notice of the outer public, are so frequent as scarcely to attract notice among the classes in which they occur. Any sensationalism that there may be in the circumstance of a father and mother receiving parish relief while theirdaughter is acquiring " accomplishments" will be found to arise rather from the principle (or want of principle) involved than from the rarity of the thing itself. Of my own personal knowledge, I could point out half a dozen such cases within a quarter of a mile of where I live, and even as I write these lines, about twelve o'clock on a wet windy night, I am disturbed by the cab bring- inghome fromher weekly dancing-class the daughter of a sailor's widow, who lives (and supports her daughter) solely upon public and private charity, in the searching out and obtaining of which she is a most able practitioner. Who that did not know them would think that that pretty, showily-dressed girl, and that frowsy old woman carrying a couple of black-looking parish loaves, who walk by each other without the sligh...« less