“Yes,” said Virginia, “for to see poor and drunken people bothers the rich man.”
“She is quite right,” I said; “poverty does and must bother the rich man, and that is just why he must get rid of it. Wells, the socialist, once said he dared not let any man be sick or poor or miserable, and bring up sick, poor, miserable children, for he could not tell what man’s grandchild would one day marry his grandchild.”
“That is an interesting way of looking at it,” said Marian. “I never thought of that.”
“So you see,” I went on, “we can no more praise ourselves for helping to better the world than we can praise people—except for their good sense and wisdom—when they put up hospitals for contagious diseases, and separate those who suffer from them. Did you ever think of it, that to take care of the weak strengthens the strong? The man who cares for two gets the strength of two.”
Florence asked: “What if there were no weak?” A good question, but an unanswerable one, from lack of experience.
“It is good,” I went on, “to use our powers, to strengthen them; and we can use them only through others. I have heard people say it is foolish for the strong to spend themselves on the weak. To me that seems untrue.”
“Yes,” said Virginia, “what is their strength for, if not to use it!”
“Sparta,” I said, “has left no trace but her history, because she cared only for physical strength, and wasted the strength and power that are in weakness.”
“I wish she had not left her history,” they said, thinking of the hard names.
“Everything leaves history,” sighed Marian.