HOLDFAST.
HOLDFAST.--"No! I am laying by a little for a rainy day, but nothing for Charity."

PARSIMONY often walks under the name of prudence, and stinginess may try to palm itself off as thrift. The man who puts aside the widowed and orphaned, by the plea that he is laying in store for a rainy day, takes extreme hazards with Fate. Her hand even now draws aside the curtains which reveal his destiny. The rainy day comes sooner than he thinks and his mortal remains are carried to the grave unattended by the sad procession of any whose distress he might have lifted. Holdfast is forever held in the tomb of his loneliness and misery. He sadly misread life's great lesson, that it is far better to give than to receive. He never knew that he was his brother's keeper. He lived for self and died as he lived. Although nominally religious such men as Holdfast never learn that

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.

James 1:27.

Scanned from Fifty Great Cartoons (Chicago: The Ram's Horn Press, 1899) unpaginated. This cartoon is part of the collections of the The Cartoon Research Library of Ohio State University.