The girl before the counter finally decided upon the toys, ordered them
sent to her home and looking scornfully at the cheap jewelry and tawdry
ornaments passed out of the store. She was thinking what a nuisance
cousins were, how ridiculous it was in her father to insist each year
upon her remembering his poor relations at Christmas, just when she
needed all her allowance for herself, and planning to tell him that next
year she did not intend to do it. She was in a most unhappy mood because
she had been denied permission to attend a house-party and she could not
bear to be denied anything. She was handicapped by the heavy hand of
money, newly acquired by her father and by the atmosphere of pride,
vanity and social ambition which surrounded her.
All day through the busy streets of the shopping district they
passed--the city's handicapped girls. Some were held back from the best
that life can give by poverty, which like a great yawning chasm lies
between the girl and all her natural desires and ambitions, some held
back from the joy of simple, natural living by the forced, artificial
social system of which they are a part, some pitiful specimens of
physical and mental handicap and some who showed the strain of the
handicap of sin, mingled in that Christmas crowd.
Through the open door of great sea-port cities there have poured during
the years past steady streams of handicapped girls.
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