nothing. Anyhow, there must be very little to be learned from it, for
those bright young cultured strangers, admirable in their eagerness for
social service, who come and live with us for a time, so that they may
understand the life of the poor, never seem to have made anything of
us. They say they have; they speak even with some amount of assurance,
at places where the problem which is us is examined aloud by confident
politicians and churchfolk. But I think they know well enough that
they always failed to get anywhere near what mind we have. There is a
reason for it, of course. Think of honest and sociable Mary Ann, of
Pottles Rents, E., having been alarmed by the behaviour of good
society, as it is betrayed in the popular picture Press, making odd
calls in Belgravia (the bells for visitors, too), to bring souls to God.

My parish, to strangers, must be opaque with its indifference. It
stares beyond the interested visitor, in the way the sad and
disillusioned have, to things it supposes a stranger would not
understand if he were told. He has reason, therefore, to say we are
dull. And Dockland, with its life so uniform that it could be an
amorphous mass overflowing a reef of brick cells, I think would be
distressing to a sensitive stranger, and even a little terrifying, as
all that is alive but inexplicable must be. No more conscious purpose
shows in our existence than is seen in the coral polyp. We just go on
increasing and forming more cells. Overlooking our wilderness of tiles
in the rain--we get more than a fair share of rain, or else the sad
quality of wet weather is more noticeable in such a place as ours--it
seems a dismal affair to present for the intelligent labours of mankind
for generations. Could nothing better have been done than that? What
have we been busy about?

Well, what are people busy about anywhere? Human purpose here has been