POVERTY
Poverty is no disgrace, but that's about all that can be said in its
favor.
A traveler passing through the Broad Top Mountain district in northern
Bedford County, Pennsylvania, last summer, came across a lad of sixteen
cultivating a patch of miserable potatoes. He remarked upon their
unpromising appearance and expressed pity for anyone who had to dig a
living out of such soil.
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"I don't need no pity," said the boy resentfully.
The traveler hastened to soothe his wounded pride. But in the offended
tone of one who has been misjudged the boy added; "I ain't as poor as
you think. I'm only _workin'_ here. I don't _own_ this place."
One day an inspector of a New York tenement-house found four families
living in one room, chalk lines being drawn across in such manner as to
mark out a quarter for each family.
"How do you get along here?" inquired the inspector.
"Very well," was the reply. "Only the man in the farthest corner keeps
boarders."
There is no man so poor but that he can afford to keep one dog, and I
hev seen them so poor that they could afford to keep three.--_Josh
Billings_.
May poverty be always a day's march behind us.
Not he who has little, but he who wishes for more, is poor.--_Seneca_.