“By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Zion. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.”
The man hid his face in his hands and sighed; his heart was sick with great longing and intolerable weariness.
“God!” he said. “Let me go mad with memory rather than forget.”
Yet after all it seemed undesirable to go mad, therefore he rose and went to a little cheap club; the members were many of them “thoughtful people” with “views”; most of their views were theoretically partly true, and practically partly false and wholly impossible to carry out; it was not always possible to put one’s finger on the flaw in them. The members of that club talked a great deal; a man was talking very earnestly when he who desired to remember entered there. He was a reformer, and willing to make any personal sacrifice to further his regenerative views. He said:
“A wider charity is what men need. That is the root of the matter.”
“Nothing has been so fruitful a cause of pauperisation,” said a red-haired man who was listening for the sole purpose of disagreeing with him. This man was the type of person who can never extend his views beyond the meaning which he has decided to apply to a word.
“I do not mean Charity in that sense. I mean rather Love, which I have heard is Wisdom in activity, that which perceives a common basis of life. This is Wisdom, this is Love, this is Charity.”
“Statistics prove,” began the man, who while the other spoke had been thinking of his own views as to the meaning of charity.
“Statistics have no more to do with Charity than they have with Truth. They are the worst form of lying extant. Charity, in my sense, is the deepest of all wisdom. Faith, Hope, Charity, these three—and the greatest of these is Charity.”
Then another voice uplifted itself.