“Come, here’s sixpence. Now, what will you do with it?”
The boy took the coin—grinned—hugged himself, hugging the skull the closer, and said very briskly, “Make a money box of it!”
A strange thought for a child. And yet, mused we as we strolled along, how many of us, with nature beneficent and smiling on all sides—how many of us think of nothing so much as hoarding sixpences—yea, hoarding them even in the very jaws of desolate Death!
THE TWO WINDOWS
The Union Workhouse of the ancient parish of Herne—how calm and pastoral is that little nook of Kent!—has two outward windows. The fabric, built by the inspiration of the New Poor-law, was a blind, eyeless piece of brickwork; a gaol for the iniquity and perseverance of poverty; a Newgate for the felony of want. The chiefs and elders of Parliament had said, “Let us make abiding-places for the poor; let us separate them, lepers as they are, from the clean; let us shut them up from the sight of the green earth; let them not behold the work of the season in the budding trees, in their leafy branches, in their red and golden robes of autumn, in the gaunt bareness of solemn winter. Let the grass spring and the wild-flower blossom; but let not the poor, the unclean of the land, look upon the work of God.” After this resolve the Union was built; with inner windows looking upon walls, and walls turned blank upon the outward world. No crevice, no loophole permitted captive poverty a look, a glimpse of the fresh face of nature; his soul, like his body, was bricked up according to statute; he had by the insolence of destitution offended the niceness of the world, and he was doomed by his judges to a divorce from the commonest rights of earth. Hence, the Union Workhouse turned its sullen, unbroken wall of brick upon the fields and trees, and the pauper was made to look only upon pauperism. The freshness and luxuriance of nature—her prodigal loveliness—was not for his eyes; he was poor, and even to behold the plenteousness of the teeming earth was an enjoyment beyond his state—a banned delight—a luxury which those who paid for his food could not properly vouchsafe him!
At length—when they themselves know it not, men’s hearts will work, a sense of right will sometimes steal upon their sleep, an instinct of goodness will, like silver water from the rock, gush forth—at length it was resolved by the guardians of the poor—guardians of the poor! what a holiness of purpose should inform those well-worn syllables—that the dull, blind, squalid workhouse should have light; that its brick walls should be pierced with two windows; that the fields and trees should gladden pauper eyes, appealing to old recollections; childhood thoughts; daily, customary feelings. It was determined that the pauper prisoner should, through the iron bars of penury, have comforting glimpses of God’s goodness without; that he should, though all unconsciously, make offerings upon the green altar of the earth; that his heart should commune, in its own unknowing way, with those sweet influences, which, coming from God, discourse in some manner to all men.
And so it was determined that the Union Workhouse should have two outward windows. The guardians of the poor appeared with the labourers. “Here,” said the guardians, “break through the wall; here pierce one window—here, another.” Then turning to the paupers, some few age-stricken folks, they said, with smug complacency, “We are going to give you some light.” And this, reader, is not a goosequill fiction; it is a thing of truth.