Page:Our Common Land (and other short essays).djvu/85

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A MORE EXCELLENT WAY OF CHARITY.
73

and sees the vast multitudes of undisciplined poor by whose labour you live, and the few heroic workers whose lives are being spent for those poor almost forsaken by you?

And if some of you went there to give what little of leisure, what little of strength, you have to spare, would your own neighbourhood suffer? I fancy not. For it seems as if usually where there are few poor and many rich living near together, the former become dependent in fat unenergetic comfort on the latter; and if this be such a neighbourhood, a few finding a call for their sympathy and help elsewhere might do good to all. It might be a real blessing to the place where you live to transfer to other and needier districts some of the superfluous wealth and unneeded care which from its very abundance may be spoiling and pampering your native poor. What a good thing it might be if each of your congregation here would undertake to help with money and with workers some poor district where