We have, it may be, felt so much joy in living, we have
been so pierced through and through in every nerve and every faculty
of the mind with pure rapture during our pilgrimage, that we would
fain let all dwellers on earth share the blessedness that we have
known. It is not to be; the gospel of pity must needs claim some of
its disciples wholly--and sorrow is their portion. Perhaps under all
their sadness there lurks a joy that passes all known to slighter
souls--I hope so; I hope that they cannot be permitted to endure what
Dante endured. In the purlieus of our cities these resigned, resolute
spirits expend their forces, and their unostentatious figures, passing
from home to home where poor men lie, offer a lesson to the petty
souls of some whose riches and worldly powers are by no means petty.
Ah, it is lovely to see those merciful sisters of the fallen or
falling--good to see the men who help them! Need we pity them? They
would say "No"; but we must, for they live hard. A delicate lady
quietly sets to work in a filthy tenement; her white hands raise up
and cleanse the foulest of the poor little infants who swarm in the
slums; she calmly performs menial offices for the basest and most
ungrateful of the poor--and no one who has not lived among those
degraded folk can tell what ingratitude is really like.
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