who, as she fancies, know nothing about her, and will never find
out whether or not she acts up to the rules which she lays down
for them. Be not deceived, I say, in this case also. Fancy not
that they know nothing about you. There is nothing secret which
shall not be made manifest; and what you do in the closet is
surely proclaimed (and often with exaggeration enough and to
spare) on the house-top. These poor folks at your gate know well
enough, through servants and tradesmen, what you are, how you
treat your servants, how you pay your bills, what sort of temper
you have; and they form a shrewd, hard estimate of your character,
in the light of which they view all that you do and say to them;
and believe me, that if you wish to do any real good to them, you
must begin by doing good to those who lie still nearer to you than
them. And believe me, too, that if you shrink from a hearty
patriarchal sympathy with your own servants, because it would
require too much personal human intercourse with them, you are
like a man who, finding that he had not powder enough to fire off
a pocket-pistol, should try to better matters by using the same
quantity of ammunition in an eighty-four pound gun. For it is
this human friendship, trust, affection, which is the very thing
you have to employ towards the poor, and to call up in them.
Clubs, societies, alms, lending libraries are but dead machinery,
needful, perhaps, but, like the iron tube without the powder,
unable to send the bullet forth one single inch; dead and useless
lumber, without humanity; without the smile of the lip, the light
of the eye, the tenderness of the voice, which makes the poor
woman feel that a soul is speaking to her soul, a heart yearning
after her heart; that she is not merely a THING to be improved,
but a sister to be made conscious of the divine bond of her
sisterhood, and taught what she means when she repeats in her