children have to be provided for. High ideals will not even pay the
bootmaker. To exist you have to fight for mean ends with mean
weapons. And the sweet girl heroine! Now the worried mother of
eleven brats! One rings down the curtain amid Satanic laughter.

That is why, for one reason among so many, I love this mystic morning
light. It has a strange power of revealing the beauty that is hidden
from us by the coarser beams of the full day. These worn men and
women, grown so foolish looking, so unromantic; these artisans and
petty clerks plodding to their monotonous day's work; these dull-eyed
women of the people on their way to market to haggle over sous, to
argue and contend over paltry handfuls of food. In this magic
morning light the disguising body becomes transparent. They have
grown beautiful, not ugly, with the years of toil and hardship; these
lives, lived so patiently, are consecrated to the service of the
world. Joy, hope, pleasure--they have done with all such, life for
them is over. Yet they labour, ceaselessly, uncomplainingly. It is
for the children.

One morning, near Brussels, I encountered a cart of faggots, drawn by
a hound so lean that stroking him might have hurt a dainty hand. I
was shocked--angry, till I noticed his fellow beast of burden pushing
the cart from behind. Such a scarecrow of an old woman! There was
little to choose between them. I walked with them a little way. She
lived near Waterloo. All day she gathered wood in the great forest,
and starting at three o'clock each morning, the two lean creatures
between them dragged the cart nine miles to Brussels, returning when
they had sold their load. With luck she might reckon on a couple of
francs. I asked her if she could not find something else to do.