VIII
THE GOAT FAMILY
Kind reader, meet my friends, the Goats. They are not rich, for, altho Mr. Goat has been an able and energetic business man all his life, and Mrs. Goat has been a thrifty housekeeper, they have never been able to get much ahead because they have always had such a horde of parasites to support. Ever since they had a home they have run a free hotel. They have literally been eaten out of house and home by self-invited guests, by forty-seventh cousins who always cashed in the blood relationship for board and lodging, and by old friends who suddenly remembered, when they happened to be in their town, how they loved the Goats and hated to pay for their own beds and meals.
Any one of their many acquaintances who wished to take a vacation without expense, or have an operation performed, or go to the opera, or see the sights of the city, just wished himself or herself on the Goats, and arrived bag and baggage to camp in the spare bedroom. And that was all there was to it; a pleasant and economical arrangement so far as the guests were concerned. And if it was inconvenient to the Goats and they had to sleep around on cots and do without new clothes to pay for the food that the deadbeats gobbled up, why, nobody bothered about that. And the Goats never complained. They never made a move to chuck these grafters out, not even rich Cousin Susan, who could have bought the family up a hundred times over, when she came and stayed six months, wore Mother Goat to a frazzle waiting on her and ran them into debt because she couldn’t eat anything but the most expensive foods. No, they feel that it would be a stain on their escutcheon to assert themselves and look out for themselves a little, and so they lived up to the Goat coat-of-arms, which is a doormat couchant, with everybody trampling over it.
By and by the eldest Miss Goat got married. Her husband proved to be a bumptious, egotistical, opinionated fellow, and when he was about the whole Goat family had to walk on eggs and suppress all their own opinions and tastes to avoid irritating him. Indeed, when their daughter married, the Goats acquired a new son, as the phrase goes, because every Sunday and on high days and holidays the young couple arrived to take dinner with papa and mamma. It was so sweet to be all together at such times, and it was also so economical and saved them the work and worry of getting their own dinner. Then the son Billy got married. Not being born a Goat, Billy’s wife had not the suffer-and-be-strong complex in her. On the contrary, she was a go-getter, and what she wanted she had to have. Therefore, Father Goat was often called on for money to help pay Mrs. Billy’s bills, which had to be met regardless of what sacrifice it entailed on the Goats at home.
Mrs. Billy died, and, of course, Billy took his motherless children, one of them a tiny baby, back home for mother and sister to take care of. They did it for a few years, until Billy married again, altho it reduced poor, worn-out mother to a physical wreck. The family didn’t approve of Billy’s choice of a second wife, but, with the Goat faculty for swallowing anything, they accepted her and felt that at least one burden would be removed from them and that Billy would take his children and set up his own home.
It appears, however, that the second wife refuses to be bothered with stepchildren, and so Billy has brought his brood back for mother and sister to rear and support. It takes all the money he can make to provide for his wife and her relatives whom she has saddled upon him.
Mother Goat says that no sacrifice is too great to make for her darling son, nor does she hesitate to offer up as a burnt offering her unmarried daughter, Nanny Goat, who labors in an office all day to make the money to help maintain the family, and who comes home at night and does most of the housework.
But Nanny is beginning to show un-Goatlike traits. She doesn’t see why she should work to feed a lot of bum company who sponge on them instead of paying their own board somewhere. She doesn’t see why she should spend her Sundays and holidays, cooking dinners for sister and brother and the in-laws when they might just as well eat at home or go to a restaurant. And she doesn’t see what right brother has to foist the care of his children and their support on his old parents and his young sister.
“I am spending my life slaving for other people and bearing other people’s burdens,” wails poor little Nanny Goat. “I earn a good salary, but I can never have any pretty clothes or indulge myself in any of the amusements I crave, because all my money is spent on people who just make a convenience of us, and who think more of being invited somewhere else to tea than they do of living on us without cost for a month. All my youth, when I ought to have the pleasures of the young, is being given to trying to raise my brother’s children, and do for them the things that he himself is too weak and pusillanimous to do. And I am sick and tired of it. I am tired of supporting grafters that are more able to work than I am. I am sick of being bled white by blood-suckers. I am sore at having to do other people’s duty for them, and I want to know how I can get out of being a perpetual Goat as long as I live.”
Alas! poor little Nanny, it is easier for the leopard to change its spots than it is for one who was born a Goat to cease being one. Still, the thing can be done, if you have nerve enough to butt your way to freedom. Shut the door in the face of the deadbeat visitors. Make your brother act the part of a man and assume his own responsibilities. And you will find that you have gained not only relief but that you have gone up a hundred per cent in every one’s esteem.
For while we all make use of the Goat family, we hold them in contempt because they let us make goats of them.