While the hysterical
newspaper people are venting abuse and coining theories, there are
quiet workers in thousands who go on in uncomplaining steadfastness
striving to remove a deadly shame from our civilisation, and smiling
softly at the furious cries of folk who know so little and vociferate
so much. After each whirlwind of sympathy has reached its full
strength, there is generally a strong disposition among the
sentimentalists to do something. No mere words for the genuine
sentimentalist; he packs his sentimental self into a cab, he engages
the services of a policeman, and he plunges into the nasty deeps of
the City's misery. He treats each court and alley as a department of a
menagerie, and he gazes with mild interest on the animals that he
views. To the sentimentalist they are only animals; and he is kind to
them as he would be to an ailing dog at home. If the sentimentalist's
womenfolk go with him, the tour is made still more pleasing. The
ladies shudder with terror as they trail their dainty skirts up
noisome stairs; but their genteel cackle never ceases. "And you earn
six shillings per week? How very surprising! And the landlord takes
four shillings for your one room? How very mean! And you have--let me
see--four from six leaves two--yes--you have two shillings a week to
keep you and your three children? How charmingly shocking!" The honest
poor go out to work; the wastrels stay at home and invent tales of
woe; then, when the dusk falls on the foul court and all the
sentimentalists have gone home to dinner, the woe-stricken tellers of
harrowing tales creep out to the grimy little public-house at the top
of the row; they spend the gifts of the sentimentalist; and, when the
landlord draws out his brimming tills at midnight, he blesses the kind
people who help to earn a snug income for him.
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