The Angel and the Author, and Others. Jerome Klapka Jerome
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give to the poor?
Or is our charity but a salve to conscience – an insurance, at decidedly moderate premium, in case, after all, there should happen to be another world? Is Charity lending to the Lord something we can so easily do without?
I remember a lady tidying up her house, clearing it of rubbish. She called it “Giving to the Fresh Air Fund.” Into the heap of lumber one of her daughters flung a pair of crutches that for years had been knocking about the house. The lady picked them out again.
“We won’t give those away,” she said, “they might come in useful again. One never knows.”
Another lady, I remember coming downstairs one evening dressed for a fancy ball. I forget the title of the charity, but I remember that every lady who sold more than ten tickets received an autograph letter of thanks from the Duchess who was the president. The tickets were twelve and sixpence each and included light refreshments and a very substantial supper. One presumes the odd sixpence reached the poor – or at least the noisier portion of them.
“A little décolletée, isn’t it, my dear?” suggested a lady friend, as the charitable dancer entered the drawing-room.
“Perhaps it is – a little,” she admitted, “but we all of us ought to do all we can for the Cause. Don’t you think so, dear?”
Really, seeing the amount we give in charity, the wonder is there are any poor left. It is a comfort that there are. What should we do without them? Our fur-clad little girls! our jolly, red-faced squires! we should never know how good they were, but for the poor? Without the poor how could we be virtuous? We should have to go about giving to each other. And friends expect such expensive presents, while a shilling here and there among the poor brings to us all the sensations of a good Samaritan. Providence has been very thoughtful in providing us with poor.
Dear Lady Bountiful! does it not ever occur to you to thank God for the poor? The clean, grateful poor, who bob their heads and curtsey and assure you that heaven is going to repay you a thousandfold. One does hope you will not be disappointed.
An East-End curate once told me, with a twinkle in his eye, of a smart lady who called upon him in her carriage, and insisted on his going round with her to show her where the poor hid themselves. They went down many streets, and the lady distributed her parcels. Then they came to one of the worst, a very narrow street. The coachman gave it one glance.
“Sorry, my lady,” said the coachman, “but the carriage won’t go down.”
The lady sighed.
“I am afraid we shall have to leave it,” she said.
So the gallant greys dashed past.
Where the real poor creep I fear there is no room for Lady Bountiful’s fine coach. The ways are very narrow – wide enough only for little Sister Pity, stealing softly.
I put it to my friend, the curate:
“But if all this charity is, as you say, so useless; if it touches but the fringe; if it makes the evil worse, what would you do?”
“I would substitute Justice,” he answered; “there would be no need for Charity.”
“But it is so delightful to give,” I answered.
“Yes,” he agreed. “It is better to give than to receive. I was thinking of the receiver. And my ideal is a long way off. We shall have to work towards it slowly.”
CHAPTER II
Philosophy, it has been said, is the art of bearing other people’s troubles. The truest philosopher I ever heard of was a woman. She was brought into the London Hospital suffering from a poisoned leg. The house surgeon made a hurried examination. He was a man of blunt speech.
“It will have to come off,” he told her.
“What, not all of it?”
“The whole of it, I am sorry to say,” growled the house surgeon.
“Nothing else for it?”
“No other chance for you whatever,” explained the house surgeon.
“Ah, well, thank Gawd it’s not my ’ead,” observed the lady.
The poor have a great advantage over us better-off folk. Providence provides them with many opportunities for the practice of philosophy. I was present at a “high tea” given last winter by charitable folk to a party of char-women. After the tables were cleared we sought to amuse them. One young lady, who was proud of herself as a palmist, set out to study their “lines.” At sight of the first toil-worn hand she took hold of her sympathetic face grew sad.
“There is a great trouble coming to you,” she informed the ancient dame.
The placid-featured dame looked up and smiled:
“What, only one, my dear?”
“Yes, only one,” asserted the kind fortune-teller, much pleased, “after that all goes smoothly.”
“Ah,” murmured the old dame, quite cheerfully, “we was all of us a short-lived family.”
Our skins harden to the blows of Fate. I was lunching one Wednesday with a friend in the country. His son and heir, aged twelve, entered and took his seat at the table.
“Well,” said his father, “and how did we get on at school to-day?”
“Oh, all right,” answered the youngster, settling himself down to his dinner with evident appetite.
“Nobody caned?” demanded his father, with – as I noticed – a sly twinkle in his eye.
“No,” replied young hopeful, after reflection; “no, I don’t think so,” adding as an afterthought, as he tucked into beef and potatoes, “’cepting, o’ course, me.”
It is a simple science, philosophy. The idea is that it never matters what happens to you provided you don’t mind it. The weak point in the argument is that nine times out of ten you can’t help minding it.
“No misfortune can harm me,” says Marcus Aurelius, “without the consent of the dæmon within me.”
The trouble is our dæmon cannot always be relied upon. So often he does not seem up to his work.
“You’ve been a naughty boy, and I’m going to whip you,” said nurse to a four-year-old criminal.
“You tant,” retorted the young ruffian, gripping with both hands the chair that he was occupying, “I’se sittin’ on it.”
His dæmon was, no doubt, resolved that misfortune, as personified by nurse, should not hurt him. The misfortune, alas! proved stronger than the dæmon, and misfortune, he found did hurt him.
The toothache cannot hurt us so long as the dæmon within us (that is to say, our will power) holds on to the chair and says it can’t. But, sooner or later, the dæmon lets go, and then we howl. One sees the idea: in theory it is excellent. One makes believe. Your bank has suddenly stopped payment. You say to yourself.
“This does not really matter.”
Your butcher and your baker say it does, and insist on making a row in the passage.
You fill yourself up with gooseberry wine. You tell yourself it is seasoned champagne. Your liver next morning says it is not.
The dæmon within us means well, but forgets it is not the only thing there. A man I knew was an enthusiast on vegetarianism. He argued that if the poor would adopt a vegetarian diet the problem of existence would be simpler for them, and maybe he was right. So one day he assembled some twenty poor lads for the purpose of introducing to them a vegetarian lunch. He begged them to believe that lentil beans were steaks, that cauliflowers were chops. As a third course he placed before them a mixture of carrots and savoury herbs, and urged them to imagine they were eating saveloys.
“Now,