The Angel and the Author, and Others. Jerome Klapka Jerome

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СКАЧАТЬ felt so mad with him, I went to snatch it out of his hand. He did not do anything that I was aware of, but at once I began falling. The faint luminosity beneath me grew, and then the lights of London seemed shooting up to meet me. I was coming down on the clock tower at Westminster. I gave myself a convulsive twist, hoping to escape it, and fell into the river.

      And then I awoke.

      But it stays with me: the weary sadness of the Angel’s face. I cannot shake remembrance from me. Would I have done better, had I taken the money I had spent upon these fooleries, gone down with it among the poor myself, asking nothing in return. Is this fraction of our superfluity, flung without further thought or care into the collection box, likely to satisfy the Impracticable Idealist, who actually suggested – one shrugs one’s shoulders when one thinks of it – that one should sell all one had and give to the poor?

The Author is troubled concerning his Investments

      Or is our charity but a salve to conscience – an insurance, at decidedly moderate premium, in case, after all, there should happen to be another world? Is Charity lending to the Lord something we can so easily do without?

      I remember a lady tidying up her house, clearing it of rubbish. She called it “Giving to the Fresh Air Fund.” Into the heap of lumber one of her daughters flung a pair of crutches that for years had been knocking about the house. The lady picked them out again.

      “We won’t give those away,” she said, “they might come in useful again. One never knows.”

      Another lady, I remember coming downstairs one evening dressed for a fancy ball. I forget the title of the charity, but I remember that every lady who sold more than ten tickets received an autograph letter of thanks from the Duchess who was the president. The tickets were twelve and sixpence each and included light refreshments and a very substantial supper. One presumes the odd sixpence reached the poor – or at least the noisier portion of them.

      “A little décolletée, isn’t it, my dear?” suggested a lady friend, as the charitable dancer entered the drawing-room.

      “Perhaps it is – a little,” she admitted, “but we all of us ought to do all we can for the Cause. Don’t you think so, dear?”

      Really, seeing the amount we give in charity, the wonder is there are any poor left. It is a comfort that there are. What should we do without them? Our fur-clad little girls! our jolly, red-faced squires! we should never know how good they were, but for the poor? Without the poor how could we be virtuous? We should have to go about giving to each other. And friends expect such expensive presents, while a shilling here and there among the poor brings to us all the sensations of a good Samaritan. Providence has been very thoughtful in providing us with poor.

      Dear Lady Bountiful! does it not ever occur to you to thank God for the poor? The clean, grateful poor, who bob their heads and curtsey and assure you that heaven is going to repay you a thousandfold. One does hope you will not be disappointed.

      An East-End curate once told me, with a twinkle in his eye, of a smart lady who called upon him in her carriage, and insisted on his going round with her to show her where the poor hid themselves. They went down many streets, and the lady distributed her parcels. Then they came to one of the worst, a very narrow street. The coachman gave it one glance.

      “Sorry, my lady,” said the coachman, “but the carriage won’t go down.”

      The lady sighed.

      “I am afraid we shall have to leave it,” she said.

      So the gallant greys dashed past.

      Where the real poor creep I fear there is no room for Lady Bountiful’s fine coach. The ways are very narrow – wide enough only for little Sister Pity, stealing softly.

      I put it to my friend, the curate:

      “But if all this charity is, as you say, so useless; if it touches but the fringe; if it makes the evil worse, what would you do?”

And questions a Man of Thought

      “I would substitute Justice,” he answered; “there would be no need for Charity.”

      “But it is so delightful to give,” I answered.

      “Yes,” he agreed. “It is better to give than to receive. I was thinking of the receiver. And my ideal is a long way off. We shall have to work towards it slowly.”

      CHAPTER II

Philosophy and the Dæmon

      Philosophy, it has been said, is the art of bearing other people’s troubles. The truest philosopher I ever heard of was a woman. She was brought into the London Hospital suffering from a poisoned leg. The house surgeon made a hurried examination. He was a man of blunt speech.

      “It will have to come off,” he told her.

      “What, not all of it?”

      “The whole of it, I am sorry to say,” growled the house surgeon.

      “Nothing else for it?”

      “No other chance for you whatever,” explained the house surgeon.

      “Ah, well, thank Gawd it’s not my ’ead,” observed the lady.

      The poor have a great advantage over us better-off folk. Providence provides them with many opportunities for the practice of philosophy. I was present at a “high tea” given last winter by charitable folk to a party of char-women. After the tables were cleared we sought to amuse them. One young lady, who was proud of herself as a palmist, set out to study their “lines.” At sight of the first toil-worn hand she took hold of her sympathetic face grew sad.

      “There is a great trouble coming to you,” she informed the ancient dame.

      The placid-featured dame looked up and smiled:

      “What, only one, my dear?”

      “Yes, only one,” asserted the kind fortune-teller, much pleased, “after that all goes smoothly.”

      “Ah,” murmured the old dame, quite cheerfully, “we was all of us a short-lived family.”

      Our skins harden to the blows of Fate. I was lunching one Wednesday with a friend in the country. His son and heir, aged twelve, entered and took his seat at the table.

      “Well,” said his father, “and how did we get on at school to-day?”

      “Oh, all right,” answered the youngster, settling himself down to his dinner with evident appetite.

      “Nobody caned?” demanded his father, with – as I noticed – a sly twinkle in his eye.

      “No,” replied young hopeful, after reflection; “no, I don’t think so,” adding as an afterthought, as he tucked into beef and potatoes, “’cepting, o’ course, me.”

When the Dæmon will not work

      It is a simple science, philosophy. The idea is that it never matters what happens to you provided you don’t mind it. The weak point in the argument is that nine times out of ten you can’t help minding it.

      “No misfortune can harm me,” says Marcus Aurelius, “without the consent of the dæmon within me.”

      The trouble is our dæmon cannot always be relied upon. СКАЧАТЬ