"The quarries do little or no harm. There are a great many things man may do that only make nature show her beauty the more. I have been thinking a good deal about it lately: it is the rubbish that makes all the difficulty—the refuse of the mills and the pits and the iron-works and the potteries that does all the mischief."
"So it is! and worst of all the human rubbish—especially that which gathers in our great cities, and gives so much labor in vain to clergyman and philanthropist!"
Hester smiled—not that she was pleased with the way Vavasor spoke, for she could not but believe he would in his rubbish include many of her dear people, but that she was amused at his sympathetic tone towards the clergy as generally concerned in the matter. For she had had a little experience, and had listened to much testimony from such as knew, and firmly believed that the clergy were very near the root of the evil; and that not with the hoe and weeder, but with the watering pot and artificial manure, helping largely to convert the poor—into beggars, and the lawless into hypocrites, heaping cairn upon cairn on the grave of their poor prostrate buried souls. But thank God, it is by the few, but fast increasing exceptions, that she knew what the rest were doing!
But perhaps he meant only the wicked when he used the word.
"What do you mean by the human rubbish, Mr. Vavasor?" she asked.
He saw he must be careful, and would fence a little.
"Don't you think," he said slowly, and measuring his words, "that in the body politic there is something analogous to the waste in matter?"
"Certainly," she answered, "only we might differ as to the persons who were to be classed in it. I think we should be careful of our judgment as to when that state has been reached. I fancy that is just the one thing the human faculty is least able to cope with. None but God can read in a man what he really is. It can't be a safe thing to call human beings, our own kith and kin, born into the same world with us, and under the same laws of existence, rubbish."
"I see what you mean," said Vavasor to Hester. But to himself said, "Good heavens!"
"You see," Hester went on—they were walking in the dark dusk, she before him in a narrow path among the trees, whence she was able both to think and speak more freely than if they had been looking in each other's face in the broad daylight—"you see, rubbish with life in it is an awkward thing to deal with. Rubbish proper is that out of which the life, so far at least as we can see, is gone; and this loss of life has rendered it useless, so that it cannot even help the growth of life in other things. But suppose, on the one hand, this rubbish, say that which lies about the mouth of a coal-pit, could be by some process made to produce the most lovely flowers, or that, on the other hand, if neglected, it would bring out the most horrible weeds of poison; infecting the air, or say horrible creeping things, then the word rubbish would mean either too much or too little; for it means what can be put to no use, and what is noxious by its mere presence, its ugliness and immediate defilement. You see, Mr. Vavasor, I have been thinking a great deal about all this kind of thing. It is my business in a way."