United States or Jordan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In these regions and in others like them darkness and filth hold forth together where the macaroni are drying; broken pipes discharge sewage in the basement living quarters where the bananas are ripening; darkness and filth dwell together in the tenement cellars where the garment-worker sews the buttons on for the sweat-shop taskmaster; goats live amiably with human kids in the cob-webbed basements where little hands are twisting stems for flowers; in the unlovely stable lofts where dwell a dozen persons in a place never intended for one; in windowless attics of tall tenements where frail lives grow frailer day by day.
"True for you, sorr," replied Mr McCarthy, stretching out his brawny fist; "and there's my hand on it to say I'll attind to your orders, if it's to holystone the face of that ould cliff there." "All right, my friend!" said Mr Meldrum, shaking the hand outstretched cordially. "I see we understand each other; and, believe me, I'll not be a hard taskmaster."
But Gus Elliot was not man enough, had not sense enough, to give her this poor chance of matrimonial escape from labor that seemed to her like a giant taskmaster, waiting with grimy, horny hand to claim her as another of his innumerable slaves.
Perplexed and wondering, for never before had her father addressed her in such a strain, the maiden answered with an earnestness of manner that seemed to content the questioner; and he resumed, with an altered, hollow, solemn voice: "Then curse the persecutors. Daughter of the great Hebrew race, arise and curse the Moorish taskmaster and spoiler!"
"I know this taskmaster not, nor can I coax or press him into giving her up without the cursed formality of a document of gift from the Pharaoh. Get thee back to Memphis with this," he drew off a signet ring and gave it to the servitor, "and to the palace. There have my scribe draw up a prayer to the Pharaoh, craving for me the mastership over the Israelite, Rachel, for household service."
While he raged at them and reviled them for opposing him with the speech of the honest and true, it had scratched his stony heart, and he had perceived the powerlessness of all his wealth to buy them if he had addressed himself to the attempt. So, even while he was their griping taskmaster and never gave them a good word, he had written their names down in his will.
Reflecting thus, he can scarcely fail to realize that materialism, everywhere entrenched, was entrenched strongest in the camps of the rich -not the idle rich, for materialism is so terrible a taskmaster that it makes its votaries its slaves. These slaves, in turn, made a slave of the artist, a minister to their pride and pretence.
Have you learned to control yourselves? Have you got the will-power in you to regulate your own conduct? Can you be your own taskmaster? You have been in the habit of looking to parents, perhaps, or to teachers, or to the heads of your boarding schools or your day schools for control in all these matters. Have you got it in yourselves to control yourselves?
How many, especially among the young, has this one mistaken phrase driven forever away from the kingdom of God? Instead of making Christ attractive, it makes Him out a taskmaster, narrowing life by petty restrictions, calling for self-denial where none is necessary, making misery a virtue under the plea that it is the yoke of Christ, and happiness criminal because it now and then evades it.
But the grand misfortune is that the spirit which these oppressive laws engendered remains. The Protestant still looks upon the Catholic as a degraded being. The Catholic does not yet consider himself upon an equality with his former tyrant and taskmaster.
Word Of The Day