Rags! A bed of
straw; a crust of bread; the shattered roof; the naked floor; a deal
table; a broken chair! A writer whose boyhood saw the terror, and want,
and despair of the last decade of the Napoleonic War, puts into the
mouth of the victim of poverty this terrible wail:
"But why do I talk of death?
That phantom of grizzly bone;
I hardly fear his terrible shape
It seems so like my own;
It seems so like my own,
Because of the fasts I keep;
Oh God, that bread should be so dear
And flesh and blood so cheap!"
To the philanthropist or the benevolent sympathiser like Lord Selkirk,
who aims at benefiting suffering humanity, it is not the trouble, the
self-sacrifice, or the spending of money in relief that is the worry,
but it is the bitterness, the suspicion, the unworkableness, and the
selfishness of the poverty-stricken themselves that disturbs and
distresses the benefactor's heart. It is often too the heartlessness and
prejudice of those who oppose the benefactor's plans that causes the
generous man anxiety and even at times despair. Poverty in its worst
form is a gaunt and ravenous beast, that bites the hand of friend or foe
that is stretched out toward it.
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