Romance is full of such shameful action; and let me say here, in passing, that in my opinion Romance often wears off our horror of what is wicked and heartless by showing it as a permanent and recognized element of society. This is the reverse of what it should do. But in these days it so exceeds its office in the hunt after the exhausted susceptibilities of a novel-reading public that it really thumps upon our aversion to vice until it wears it out.
De Balzac's novel called "Father Goriot" tells the story of a man of humble origin who grows rich by trade, educates his daughters for fashionable life, marries them to men of condition, portions them abundantly, and is in return kept carefully out of what the world knows of their lives. They seek him only when they want money, which they always do, in spite of the rich dowry settled on them at their marriage. _Father Goriot_ sells his last piece of silver to help them, and dies in a low boarding-house, tended by the charity of strangers, tormented to the last by the bickering of his children, but not cheered for one moment by their affection.
I have heard on good authority that people of wealth and position in our large cities sometimes deposit their aged and helpless parents in asylums where they may have all that money can buy for them, but nothing of what gratitude and affection should give them. How detestable such a course is I need not say; my present business is to say that it is far from polite.
Apropos of this suggestion, I remember that I was once invited to read this essay to a village audience in one of the New England States. My theme was probably one quite remote from the general thought of my hearers. As I went on, their indifference began to affect me, and my thought was that I might as well have appealed to a set of wooden tenpins as to those who were present on that occasion.
In this, I afterwards learned that I was mistaken. After the conclusion of the evening's exercise, a young man, well known in the community, was heard to inquire urgently where he could find the lecturer. Friends asked, what did he want of her? He replied: "Well, I did put my brother in the poorhouse, and now that I have heard Mrs. Howe, I suppose that I must take him out."