"
"I confess," said Vavasor, "the condition of our poor in our large towns
is the great question of the day."
"--which every one is waking up to _talk_ about," said Hester, and
said no more.
For, as one who tried to do something, she did not like to go on and say
that if all who found the question interesting, would instead of talking
about it do what they could, not to its solution but to its removal,
they would at least make their mark on the _rubbish_-heap, of which
not all the wind of words would in ten thousand years blow away a
spadeful. And yet is talk a less evil than the mischief of mere
experimenters. It is well there is the talk to keep many from doing
positive harm. It is not those who, regarding the horrors around them as
a nuisance, are bent upon their destruction, who will work any salvation
in the earth, but those who see the wrongs of the poor, and strive to
give them their own. Not those who desire a good report among men, nor
those who seek an antidote against the tedium of a selfish existence,
but those who, loving their own flesh and blood, and willing not merely
to spend but to be spent for them, draw nigh them, being to being, will
cause the light to rise upon such as now sit in darkness and the shadow
of death.
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