The Holt County Sentinel

Ingratitude.

One of our exchanges gives an account of a man (?) who is said to have refused a haven to his aged mother, his excuse being that he was unable to take care of her. Whether an investigation supported the story or not, it is lamentably true that the alms houses of the state tell a bitter tale of ingratitude of children. Hardly a one but has one or two mothers, old, infirm; perhaps blind, dependent on public bounty, with sons and daughters living in circumstances fairly well-to-do. In rare cases do the discarded people complain of the treatment. Their love for their children is so great that they willingly submit to the degradation of public charity that their offspring may be relieved of the responsibility. But what of the children who accept this self effacement by those who brought them into life and kept vigil over their cradles in time of pain and sickness? What sort of an apparition can they hope for, when the shadows come down on their own ungrateful lives? Will the mother in pauper shroud and cheap pine box bring restful thoughts to the fevered head? The real test of men and women is their treatment of the aged and infirm. The family having such a care is blessed of the Lord if it cheerfully and gladly shoulders the responsibility. It is a very safe assertion that no man in this world has ever been bankrupted because of attention shown the charges committed to him by the Divinity. If he complains of it, he is an unfaithful steward; if he repudiates the obligation entirely he bears through life the leprosy-mark of ingratitude, more degrading than the brand that designates the galley-slave. Men will not trust him, and women look at him in horror as he passes. It is useless for him to attempt to reform his moral deformity. The talents that were entrusted to him were misapplied and all the world knows it. The opportunity to perform a good deed was his, and he pushed it aside. It will come no more, but something else will come. He can't escape it. The gaunt figure of remorse will rise from the Stygian waters and never leave him. The hard bed of the alms house would be a downy couch compared with his. There may be rest for the old bones that he permitted to be thrown in the potter's field, but none will ever come to him. He will live as an Ishmaelite and die like a craven, calling to the parent he discarded and begging for mercy. "Inasmuch as ye did not to one of the least of these, ye did not to me."