Page:Malabari, Behramji M. - Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882).djvu/237

Rh natural wretch. Vain, vain is the hope. The father is a thief and a traitor, developing a degree of selfishness which is absolutely fiendish. And still he is an ornament of mofussil society! He is ever on the alert to catch the eye of the public. He presents a stable-house to the Anjuman, and his charity is loudly praised. "Leaders of society" crowd at his dinners, call him a public benefactor, while at the same time they know that the imbecile, whose substance they are eating up like pariahs, has a family literally starving—the sons going about from office to office for work which they have not been taught to perform, the daughters eking out a precarious existence by sewing and stitching, and the wife, the "lady of the house," daughter of a true gentleman, is ending her days in sorrow and in suffering, aggravated by the cries of adults and infants of an ever-increasing family. And honest editors immortalise the virtues of Jamál Gotá, Esquire, Justice of the Peace, Khán Báhádur, "our great philanthropist," whom they know to have been an undutiful son, a wicked husband, an unnatural parent, a false friend, so worse