You will never understand. But the rest of
you who are willing to sit with me at the feet of little Molly and
learn from her, listen: She was poor and ragged and starved. Her
home was a hovel. We were debating, some good women who knew her
and I, how best to make a merry Christmas for her, and my material
mind hung upon clothes and boots and rubbers, for it was in
Chicago. But the vision of her soul was a pair of red shoes! Her
heart craved them; aye, brethren, and she got them. Not for all
the gold in the Treasury would I have trodden it under in pork and
beans, smothered it in--no, not in rubber boots, though the mud in
the city by the lake be both deep and black. They were the window,
those red shoes, through which her little captive soul looked out
and yearned for the beauty of God's great world. Could I forget
the blue boots with the tassels which I worshipped in my boyhood?
Nay, friends, the robin and the dandelion we must put back into
those barren lives if we would have good citizenship. They and the
citizenship are first cousins.
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