News: Granton - Bingville (24 Feb 1911)

Contact: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon

Email: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Hillyer, Gookins, Weathersby, Peterby,

----Source: The Granton News (Granton, Clark Co., WI.) February 24, 1911

Bingville (24 February 1911)

We was pretty hard put to it for a subject to write an editorial about as we have used up most every subject you can think of and some of ‘em twice during our strenuous career as correspondent to The Granton News, until suddenly we happened to think of the subject of "Charity - and What Good is it?" and how scarce it is in this community, so we immediately dashed off an editorial about Charity.

We calkilate it will be just as well before we go any further to explain to our army of subscribers just what charity is being as the chances is they don’t know what it means from a dog’s hind leg.  If old Granny Hillyer for instants would agree to go to the poor farm and end her days where she would be took care of for nothing instead of depending on her neighbors for her living and being so partickler and independent as a hog on the ice into the bargain that would be charity.  Charity is doing something for somebody else who ain’t able to do it for themselves. There is another illustration of what charity is in the Bible where that feller was sick and lame and laying by the road side and hollering for help and a Republican come along and passed him by on the other side and didn’t help him none, but by and by there was a Democrat passed by and bandaged him up and give him a drink and done all he could for him.  That’s charity.  The Bible also says that of faith and hope and charity the greatest of these is charity.

It would be a good thing for Bingville if there was a little more charity in our midst.  At present there isn’t none so far as we can see.  Or if there be any it’s so scarce that you can scarcely notice it with the naked eye.  Some time ago Mrs. Sim Gookins went into Hen Weathersby’s to buy a chintz dress pattern and Hen shoed her a green pattern with a white figger in it which pleased her terrible well for as soon as she saw it her heart was set on it, but it happened that she didn’t have enough money with her to buy it so she went away and said she would wait until she sold more butter and eggs.

Well, while Mrs. Sim was waiting for the hens to lay and dreaming of that dress pattern by night, along comes Mrs. Snod Peterby to Hen’s store also looking for a dress pattern and when she found out that Mrs. Sim’s heart was set on the green chintz she bought it right on the spot and paid for it and took it right to Phoebe Hilderbrand to be made up into a dress.  Last Sunday when Mrs. Sim found out that Mrs. Petersby had purchased the dress she was as mad as a wet hen.  Last Sunday Mrs. Peterby wore her new green chintz to church and was the cynosure of all eyes.  After church the wimmen folks got to talking about the new dress and Mrs. Sim declared she thought it was the ugliest dress pattern she ever set her eyes on being as she couldn’t abide the green and that Hen wanted to sell it to her at a bargain because it was damaged and had been in stock 19 years and that it didn’t fit Mrs. Snod no place and that she couldn’t wear green no how because it didn’t go with her completion and so forth.  The way Mrs. Sim talked is what we call absence of charity.

Another place in our midst where you don’t see no charity is in the Bingville Church. Sunday after Sunday the contribution plate is passed around and what is put into it? We ask.  Nothing but a few cents and some nickels with holes in them and pantz buttons and apple paring, etc., too numerous to mention.  Is this charity?  Not by a blame sight. To be charitable is to give of your substance according to your several ability and to give with your left hand without letting your right hand know anything about it.  To give with your left hand and then holler about so as everybody can hear is almost as not giving at all.  Let us be more charitable in the future than we have been in the past.  Let us help others. Let us pay up our subscription to The Granton News ungrudgingly and with cheerful hearts.