V.—Part of letter from an honest correspondent expressing difficulties which will occur to many:—
“I thank you for what you say about the wickedness of ‘taking interest’ consisting in the cruelty of making a profit out of the distresses of others. And much of the modern spirit of looking for bargains, and buying in the cheapest market, is precisely the same. But is there not a radical moral difference between such deliberate heartlessness, and simply receiving interest from an ordinary investment? Surely it is very important that this matter should be made clear.”
The difference between deliberate and undeliberate heartlessness;—between being intelligently cruel, with sight of the victim, and stupidly cruel, with the interval of several walls, some months, and aid and abetting from many other equally cruel persons, between him and us, is for God to judge; not for me. But it is very important that this matter should be made clear, and my correspondent’s question, entirely clarified, will stand thus: [[272]]
“If I persist in extracting money from the poor by torture, but keep myself carefully out of hearing of their unpleasant cries, and carefully ignorant of the arrangements of mechanism which enable me, by turning an easy handle, to effect the compression of their bones at that luxurious distance, am I not innocent?” Question which I believe my correspondent quite capable of answering for himself.
VI.—Part of a letter from my nice goddaughter:—
“I want to tell you about an old woman we sometimes go to see here” (Brighton), “who was ninety-one yesterday. She lived in service till her health failed, and since then she has had her own little room, which is always exquisitely clean and neat. The bed-hangings and chair-covers are all of white dimity, embroidered by her in patterns of her own designing, with the ravellings of old carpets. She has made herself two sets. Her carpet is made in the same way, on coarse holland covered close with embroidery, which, as she says proudly, never wears out. She is still able to work, though her arrangement of colours isn’t quite as good as it used to be. The contrast came into my mind between work like that, and something I was told the other day,[4]—that it takes a workwoman a week to make one inch of the finest Valenciennes lace, and that she has to do it, sitting in a dark cellar, with the light only admitted through a narrow slit, to concentrate it on the work. It’s enough to make one give up wearing Valenciennes at all!”
This last piece of impassioned young lady’s English, translated into unimpassioned old gentleman’s English, means, I suppose, that “it is very shocking, but not at all enough to make one give up wearing Valenciennes.” Nor should it be. But it [[273]]should be quite enough to make one inquire into the matter; ascertain with what degree of fineness lace can be made in the open daylight and fresh air of France; request some benevolent lady friend, who has nothing else to do, to undertake the sale of such lace, with due Episcopal superintendence of the relieved workers; and buy one’s lace only from this benevolent lady-Bishop. [[275]]
[1] The twenty-third verse of the same chapter is to be the shield-legend of the St. George’s Company. [↑]
[2] Meaning, to do his work instead of him. Compare Acts xx. 35. “I have showed you all things, how that, so labouring, ye ought to support the weak.” [↑]