Fors Clavigera (Volume 6 of 8) /

FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTERS
TO THE WORKMEN AND LABOURERS OF GREAT BRITAIN.
BY JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D. , HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART.
Vol. VI. GEORGE ALLEN, SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT. 1876.
November 28th, 1875.
(In the house of a friend who, being ashamed of me and my words, requests that this Fors may not be dated from it.)
Howsoever, I have found out the art, this morning, in the actual ashes; thinking all the time how it was possible for people to live in this weather, who had no cinders to sift. My hostess’s white cat, Lily, woke me at half-past five by piteous mewing at my window; and being let in, and having expressed her thanks by getting between my legs over and over again as I was shaving, has at last curled herself up in my bed, and gone to sleep,—looking as fat as a little pillow, only whiter; but what are the cats to do, to-day, who have no one to let them in at the windows, no beds to curl up into, and nothing but skin and bones to curl?
Indeed, my pious public, you cannot, at present, by any coal or blanket subscription, do more than blind yourselves to the plain order “Give to him that asketh thee; and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away.”
To him that asketh us, say the public,—but then—everybody would ask us.
Yes, you pitiful public,—pretty nearly everybody would: that is indeed the state of national dignity, and independence, and gushing prosperity, you have brought your England into; a population mostly of beggars, (at heart); or, worse, bagmen, not merely bearing the bag—but nothing else but bags;—sloppy star-fishy, seven-suckered stomachs of indiscriminate covetousness, ready to beg, borrow, gamble, swindle, or write anything a publisher will pay for.
Nevertheless your order is precise, and clear; ‘Give to him that asketh thee’—even to the half of your last cloak—says St. Martin; even to the whole of it, says Christ: ‘whosoever of you forsaketh not all that he hath, cannot be my disciple.’