This meeting led to important results. It is by small and apparently trivial matters that the main issues of life are determined. A fall of rain, the plucking of a flower, the accidental turning to the right or the left--any one of these trifling incidents is sufficient to stamp the future with an indelible impress.
Parkinson was the name of the man whose daughter had been tempted from her home by the false wooing of a man in a superior station of life to her own; the daughter's name was Mary. The disclosure of this private wrong proved to be the most exciting incident in the proceedings of the Wilberforce Club on the night of the proposed election, and after the meeting broke up the grievance formed the subject of animated discussion all around the neighborhood. To feel and express sympathy for the father was humanly natural, but here and there this sympathy was expressed in an unreasoning and dangerous manner, and served as a peg--as was attempted at the Wilberforce--upon which to hang an ominous string of hardships as between class and class. Dr. Perriera, who had remained a firm and faithful friend to Nansie and her family, had just listened to certain outpourings of this nature mouthed by a trenchant demagogue to a small band of working-men and lads, among whom, also, was Mr. Loveday. These two more intelligent of the audience walked away together.
"It is remarkable," said Dr. Perriera, "to note the blindness of these ignorant orators to palpable facts. The way in which Mary Parkinson was brought up was enough to ruin any girl. A father at work all day and spending his nights at the Wilberforce Club. A mother dying when her daughter was twelve years of age, and leaving as a legacy to her child a recollection of frivolities. This was one of the reasons--perhaps the principal one--why Parkinson spent nearly all his leisure time away from his home. His wife had no notion of domestic duties, was a bad cook, and either would not or could not make his home attractive to him. Parkinson is a good and skilful workman, has never been ill a week in his life, has never been out of employment. This is an unusual record, but it has not benefited him. When his wife was alive she and he between them spent every penny of his earnings; she was fond of incongruous color in her dress, fond of mock jewelry, fond of aping the foolish fashions of her betters. She was fond of worse things--of music-halls and their brutalizing vulgarity. I am well aware that it is absolutely necessary to provide amusement for the people; without it life would be unendurable; but I have always been of the opinion, and experience has confirmed it, that amusement in a worse form than that provided by the music-hall could scarcely be devised. I speak of the entertainments as a whole. There are portions of them which are innocently amusing and healthful, but the most popular features are those which the exponents of coarseness and vulgarity provide. I had some opportunity of studying Mrs. Parkinson's character, and I know that it was this coarser element of the entertainments that attracted her. I frequently heard her singing verses of songs which, I regret to say, were and are popular, and the true meaning of which is an offence to decency. The mischief is that this moral poison is at the bottom of the cup; but it is well known to be there by everybody who partakes of it; and even when it is so cleverly veiled that it can only be conveyed by a motion or a gesture, this form of expression is carried away by the audience and used by them when they sing the song in private. It is to Parkinson's credit that he preferred the Wilberforce Club to the music-hall; but it is not to his credit that he left the entire social education and recreation of his daughter to one so unfitted for these duties as his wife. I would not make life too serious, but I refuse to excuse any person who ignores its responsibility. Parkinson allowed his wife to take their little Mary to the music-halls, and to implant in her nature a foundation of frivolity which has borne bad fruit; it could not be hoped that it would bear good."