And how many poor are there in the world?
The bell was toning for eight o'clock Benediction at the Sardinia St. Chapel on that evening of the eighteenth of March--Sardinia St. Chapel, which stands so tremulously in the shadows of Lincoln's Inn Fields--tremulously, because any day the decision of the council of a few men may rase it ruthlessly to the ground.
Amongst all the figures kneeling there in the dim candle-light, their shoulders hunched, their heads sinking deeply in their hands, there was not one but on whose lips the name of poor St. Joseph lingered in earnest or piteous appeal.
These were the poor of the earth, and who and what were they?
There was a stock-broker who paid a rent of some three hundred pounds a year for his offices in the City, a rent of one hundred and fifty for his chambers in Temple Gardens, and whose house in the country was kept in all the splendour of wealth.
Behind him--he sat in a pew by himself--was a lady wearing a heavy fur coat. She was young. Twenty-three at the utmost. There was nothing to tell from her, but her bent head, that the need of money could ever enter into her consideration. She also was in a pew alone. Behind her sat three servant girls. On the other side of the aisle, parallel with the lady in the fur coat, there was a young man--a writer--a journalist--a driver of the pen, whose greatest source of poverty was his ambition.
Kneeling behind him at various distances, there were a clerk, a bank manager, a charwoman; and behind all these, at the end of the chapel, devout, intent, and as earnest as the rest, were four Italian organ-grinders.
These are the poor of the earth. They are not a class. They are every class. Poverty is not a condition of some; it is a condition of all. Those things we desire are so far removed from those which we obtain, that all of us are paupers. And so, that simple arithmetical problem must remain unsolved; for it is impossible to tell the poor of this world and, therefore, just so impossible it is to count the candles that are burnt, the prayers that are prayed or the hopes that are born on the eve of St. Joseph's day.
CHAPTER II
THE LAST CANDLE