A Victorian Scrapbook

“What! Stay at home for that squalling young one? Catch me to;” and the young mother threw on bonnet and shawl, and humming a gay air, sauntered out on the promenade. One and another bowed and smiled as she moved along, flushed triumphant and beautiful. A young man met here just as she was passing the shop at a well known firm.

“Ah! Cut again Delia?” he said carelessly – “Where is Charley?” “With Hannah, of course; you don’t expect me to tie myself to him,” she returned. The young man’s face grew cloudy, - “No,” he returned, with a half sigh, “but I can’t bear to have him left with servants.” “Oh! Well, I can;” she said, and with a radiant smile left her husband, hard at work, and flitted on.

“Answer all his questions? Make myself a slave as I should be obliged to? Oh no; can’t think of it. If I give him his breakfast and plenty of play-things, I consider my duty done; I don’t believe in fussing over children – let them find out things as they grow up.”

“There’s the danger:” replied the dear old lady, casting a pitying look upon the richly embroidered cloak her son’s wife had bent over all day; “they find out things that ruin them, unless the mother be constantly imparting the right kind of knowledge.”

“O! you want to make him a piece of perfection, like his father; well, I can’t say I do: I don’t like these faultless men. See – now isn’t the contrast beautiful! Come here, Charley, lovey, he shall have the handsomest cloak in the whole city!"

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"Yes, but to think you should allow him to go to the theatre without my knowledge!” and the husband groaned.

“Dear me! why what a fret you are in; do let the child see something of the world.”

“In jail! My God! husband, not our boy!”

“Yes, in jail for stealing”

“Not our boy! Not our Charley-no-no-it cannot be; let me die – kill me, but don’t tell me our Charley is a thief.”

The boy was sentenced to State’s prison, and the mother carried to a lunatic asylum the next day.