For Love or Gold? The Story of a Great Department Store — page 66: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

he. me ERR He SR RS oe Stes + ae CIR me Ae, oe * : ee 62 . A Complication of Troubles, terested in spite of herself. “Are they not driven this way or that, according to their opportunities? In my case there was no choice. I had tried everything else. Hard as it is, | am thankful for my present employment.” The man looked at her sharply. There was genuine sympathy in his face. Almost involuntarily he broke out in violent sentences. “You girls are to blame in great measure for all this, and where the fault is not yours it lies with your parents! Instead of cultivating your graces you bedraggle them with labor! Instead of marketing your smiles you trade in blood and sinew! Every day in that store means a year off of your life; every anxious moment means an in- road into your rightful happiness! Why will you not see the folly of your ways? Why can you not understand that it is a false morality which is killing you? Why, it I were a girl’—his voice had dropped to the most per- Suasive cadence—I should value my beauty too highly to hide it behind a counter, and my subsistence should be the boundless reward of affection, rather than the nig- gardly recompense for wasted tissues! Of course, I shock you, because you have done no thinking for your- self. A lot of narrow souled ancestors have done think- ing for you. They have brought you here to let you shift for yourself, but woe to you if you offend one of their petty notions of honor. See, child! I have money, | have constant ease. Could you blame me for offering to share it with youth and beauty ?” As he breathed these words he gazed at Faith eagerly: The soul in the man had vanished. He was dangerously in earnest. : The thrill that flowed through Faith’s veins as he spoke was not of fear, for, child that she was, she understood his meaning, and his words stirred the deepest channels of her soul—she was more grieved than shocked at the man’s distorted reasoning. “You are all wrong,” she said, sadly. “You cannot understand! ‘There are some things more precious than gold to ts, more precious even than comfort or affection. Not for the world would I lose this ‘something’ which I a: comicbooks.com — * ~ a