Spitalfields weaver; and that is all.'
That is all."
"What more did the fellow deserve?" asked her companion. "No doubt he was a very good weaver. Why, he has got a great posthumous reputation. You have quoted him."
He did not quite follow her line of thought. She was thinking in some vague way of the waste of material.
"They had very little power of raising the world, to be sure. They were quite poor, ill-educated, and without resource."
"It seems to me," replied her companion, "that nobody has any power of raising the world. Look at the preachers and the writers and the teachers. By their united efforts they contrive to shore up the world and keep it from falling lower. Every now and then down we go, flop—a foot or two of civilization lost. Then we lose a hundred years or so until we can get shoved up again."
"Should not rich men try to shove up, as you call it?"
"Some of them do try, I believe," he replied; "I don't know how they succeed."
"Suppose, for instance, this young lady, this Miss Messenger, who owns all this property, were to use it for the benefit of the people, how would she begin, do you suppose?"
"Most likely she would bestow a quantity of money to a hospital, which would pauperize the doctors, or she would give away quantities of blankets, bread, and beef in the winter, which would pauperize the people."