“I should be more delighted than you can imagine,” said Alice. “Call me the ‘Louise Missionary.’ And now, as the cold weather is coming, I think you will want to provide me with one or two hundred pairs of mittens and warm stockings, and perhaps you will like to use some of the money in Christmas gifts for those who rarely have presents.”
“Capital,” said Louise. “And I have another suggestion. I love animals so much, dogs and horses especially, that I want children taught to be kind to them. Let us put two hundred copies of ‘Our Dumb Animals,’ each fifty cents a year, into as many homes, for nobody can read that paper without being kinder all his life.”
Louise Strong was married quietly to one of the noblest men of the city, and Alice Jameson began her labor of love. After one year of work, and gifts supplied by Louise, of course a generous father and husband would not see the enterprise abandoned. The incidents of the next few years, told by Alice to Louise, the dying cared for, children saved and placed in good homes, men helped and women cheered, would fill a volume. Louise, thus kept in touch with the world’s sorrow, did not forget and become selfish. How many lives were blessed with that wedding money!
“WE ARE sorry to let you go, James, but business is dull and we must cut down expenses.”
The speaker was the head of a hardware store, a man not unkind in nature, but who looked at business purely as a money-making matter. Men were not to be carried over a long winter if there was no need for their help.
James Leonard’s eyes fell on the paper where he was writing with a sadder expression than before, but he said nothing. Both of his parents were dead. He was not strong in body, and none too well fitted to cope with the obstacles one meets in the daily struggle for existence. He would, of course, look for work, but that it was not easy to find he had proved when attempting to get a situation several months before. He had very little money saved for his board, for wages had been small. He would keep his inexpensive room, eat but two meals a day, if need be, and hoped his money would last till a place could be found.
The next morning he started out, not over-courageous, but determined to be persevering. From store to store, from office to office, he asked for work, and received the same old reply—“We are discharging men, rather than hiring new ones.” Days went by and grew into weeks. He came home hungry, cold, and tired. There was nobody to confer with or to cheer him. He could not get bookkeeping—that was hopeless. He would take any kind of work that could be obtained, for his money was growing perilously scant.