Page:Our Common Land (and other short essays).djvu/113

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A WORD ON GOOD CITIZENSHIP.
101

be really helpful? In some offices in the poor districts we have found honorary secretaries to do this, and splendid work it has been. Wherever such help has been forthcoming the poor have been well served, and the old-fashioned donors have been in some measure won to wiser courses of action. But many more such honorary secretaries are needed, and that imperatively and immediately. Are there no men of leisure, with intellect and heart, who will come forward? I have known no such urgent need as this in the many years I have spent face to face with the poor since I came to London—the need of advice, of sympathy, of thoughtful decision for poor man after poor man, as he comes up to our offices at a crisis in his life.

One more instance of the way help can be given, and I have done; for I will not dwell now on the good that might be done by the purchase and management of the houses of the poor, by teaching, by entertainments for