. Beauty for ashes. inquiries about my work, and impoliteremarks about the poor. After worming out of mewhat the tenement law would give to the latter, inthe way of water, plumbing, etc., she expressed her-self strongly as to the waste of such things on thepoor, who were filthy, and would put coal orvegetables in the bath tubs,^ who didnt appreciateanything done for them, were destructive to prop-erty, etc. But the law doesnt give them bath tubs, I triedto say, with no chance to enlarge on the fitness of pro-viding them for those who were filthy. When hertirade abated I ventured, May I ask whe
. Beauty for ashes. inquiries about my work, and impoliteremarks about the poor. After worming out of mewhat the tenement law would give to the latter, inthe way of water, plumbing, etc., she expressed her-self strongly as to the waste of such things on thepoor, who were filthy, and would put coal orvegetables in the bath tubs,^ who didnt appreciateanything done for them, were destructive to prop-erty, etc. But the law doesnt give them bath tubs, I triedto say, with no chance to enlarge on the fitness of pro-viding them for those who were filthy. When hertirade abated I ventured, May I ask whether you have gone much amongthe poor? Oh, mercy, no, she answered, in atone of horror and disgust. I couldnt bear to mixwith that kind of creatures. And then I couldnt refrain, I judged so, for Inever heard any one speak of them that way, whoreally knew them. Why do you spend your time and strength forthat kind of trash? a friend asked me. If theywere deserving, or appreciate what you do, even, itwouldnt be so bo T H E P 0 0 R 131 Even those who work among them often fail tomeasure them by fair standards. You cant be-lieve anything one of them says, complained a girlwho taught a mission class. If we must make peoplesee that it is those who are sick, and not the well,who need a physician, may we not also call in anoptician? The poor are so miserable, and they make everyone about them so miserable, isnt it a pity they cantall die off, like flies, in the winter? The girl who asked that, in unsmiling jest, wasworking then to the point of exhaustion, out of sym-pathy for the poor. The protest I want to make is against the twocommonest but greatest errors. One is, the unfair-ness of speaking of the poor, in one contemptuousbreath, as if they were all of one class, andall degraded. The other is, the assumption thatthe poor have peculiar faults and vices which makethem odious, and differentiate them from all the restof society. For the first, let me say that when we come closeen
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