Identifier: beautyforashes01baco (find matches)
Title: Beauty for ashes
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Bacon, Albion Fellows, 1865-1933
Subjects: Working class Tenement houses Poor
Publisher: New York, Dodd, Mead and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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mothers who trem-ble when an ambulance or a patrol wagon rumbles by,and who hide their little ones under the ragged cov-erlet when the noise of heavy feet on the stair tellsthat a carousal is over or a fight is on. And if thedaughter steals in later, ofi^ the street, they are thank-ful that she comes in at all. But the lowest types, not having our sensibili-ties, cannot suffer so keenly,^ people say. If they have not our refined anguish, neither havethey our higher consolations. Superstition shadowsthe poor with countless fears, as we find at everyturn. Some writers dwell strongly on the paralysingterror of want, the fear that the Wolf will actuallyend them. Do they fear it so, those half brothersof Romulus, who have known only that same shaggyfoster mother? Or do they think of her as Hoodsseamstress thought of Death — I hardly fear histerrible shape, it seems so like my own. The highertypes do show this fear, with an equal dread of thealmshouse. The thought of a pauper burial preys
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CD> O T H E P 0 0 R 143 upon them, too. Some of them will take us to a littlebattered trunk, and show us, folded away, the cleansheets, the coarse shroud, and the small sum of money,saved, though they starve, so they can be put awayright. The matter of sensibilities is made so much ofthat one would be led to believe, almost, that the ques-tion of the shabbiness of the poor is a question ofpoor taste, and not of a poor purse. Pore folkshas pore ways, of necessity. But the discussion ofthe ragged children over the dress in the shop windowwas significant. If its pretty, it costs, and if itcosts, we caint git it. Our Flower Mission girls had many tales to tellof the craving of the poor for beauty, for finer things,often for higher things. One of them made a con-quest of a group of girls in a tenement neighbour-hood. Their admiration reached the point of want-ing to copy her dress, her hat, and her coiffure, andshe actually took down her beautiful hair to showthem how she arranged it. G

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