I.

The old and somewhat cynical saying, that philosophers and reformers can

bear the griefs and woes of other people with a heroism and resignation

worthy of their creeds, would have fitted the case of Roland Barker only

when shorn of the intentional sting of sarcasm. It is, nevertheless,

true that even his nobly-gifted nature, his tender heart, and his alert

brain sometimes failed to grasp the very pith and point of his own

arguments.

He was a wealthy man whose sympathies were earnestly with the poor and

unfortunate. He believed that he understood their sufferings, their

ambitions, and their needs; and his voice and pen were no more truly on

the side of charity and brotherly kindness than was his purse.

It was no unusual thing for him to attend a meeting, address a club, or

take part in a memorial service, where his was the only hand unused to

toil, and where he alone bore all expense, and then--after dressing

himself in the most approved and faultless manner--become the guest

of honor at some fashionable entertainment. Indeed, he was a leader in

fashion as well as in philosophy, and at once a hero in Avenue A and on

Murray Hill.

On the evening of which I am about to tell you he had addressed a

club of workingmen in their little dingy hall, taking as his subject

"Realities of Life." He had sought to show them that poverty and toil

are not, after all, the worst that can befall a man, and that the most

acute misery dwells in palaces and is robed in purple.

He spoke with the feeling of one who had himself suffered--as, indeed,

he had--from the unsympathetic associations of an uncongenial marriage.

He portrayed, with deep feeling, the chill atmosphere of a loveless

home, whose wealth and glitter and lustre could never thrill and

enrapture the heart as might the loving hand-clasp in the bare, chill

rooms where sympathy and affection were the companions of poverty.

I had admired his enthusiasm as he pictured the joy of sacrifice for the

sake of those we love, and I had been deeply touched by his

pathos--a pathos which I knew, alas, too well, sprang from a hungry

heart--whether, as now, it beat beneath a simple coat of tweed or, as

when hours later, it would still be the prisoner of its mighty longing,

though clothed with elegance and seated at a banquet fit for princes.

The last words fell slowly from his lips, and his eyes were dimmed, as

were the eyes of all about me. His voice, so full of feeling, had hardly

ceased to throb when, far back in the little hall, arose a woman,

thin and worn, and plainly clad, but showing traces of a beauty and

refinement which had held their own and fought their way inch by inch

in spite of poverty, anxiety, and tears. The chairman recognized her and

asked her to the platform.

"No," she said, in a low, tremulous tone which showed at once her

feeling and her culture--"no, I do not wish to take the platform; but

since you ask for criticism of the kind speech we have just listened to,

it has seemed to me that I might offer one, although I am a stranger to

you all."

Her voice trembled, and she held firmly to the back of a chair in front

of her. The chairman signified his willingness to extend to her the

privilege of the floor, and there was slight applause. She bowed and

began again slowly:

"I sometimes think that it is useless to ever try to make the suffering

rich and the suffering poor understand each other. I do not question

that the gentleman has tasted sorrow. All good men have. I do not

question that his heart is warm and true and honest, and that he truly

thinks what he has said; but"--and here her voice broke a little and her

lip trembled--"but he does not know what real suffering is. He cannot.

No rich man can." There was a movement of impatience in the room, and

some one said, loud enough to be heard, "If she thinks money can bring

happiness she is badly left."

There was a slight ripple of laughter at this, and even the serious face

of Roland Barker grew almost merry for a moment. Then the woman went on,

without appearing to have noticed the interruption:

"I do not want to seem ungracious, and heaven knows, no one could mean

more kindly what I say; but he has said that money is not needed to make

us happy--only love; and again he quotes that baseless old maxim, 'The

love of money is the root of all evil.'" She paused, then went slowly on

as if feeling her way and fearing to lose her hold upon herself: "I know

it is a sad and cruel world even to the more fortunate, if they have

hearts to feel and brains to think. To the unloving or unloved there

must be little worth; but they at least are spared the agony that sits

where love and poverty have shaken hands with death"--her voice broke,

and there was a painful silence in the room--"where those who love are

wrung and torn by all the thousand fears and apprehensions of ills that

are to come to wife and child and friend. The day has passed when all

this talk of poverty and love--that love makes want an easy thing to

bear--the day has passed, I say, when sane men ought to think, or wise

men speak, such cruel, false, and harmful words. He truly says that

money without love cannot bring happiness; but that is only half the

truth, for love with poverty can bring, does bring, the keenest agony

that mortals ever bore."

There was a movement of dissent in the hall. She lifted her face a

moment, contracted her lips, drew a long breath, and said:

"I will explain. Without the love, poverty were light enough to bear.

What does it matter for one's self? It is the love that gives the awful

sting to want, and makes its cruel fingers grip the throat as never vise

or grappling-hook took hold, and torture with a keener zest than fiends

their victims! Love and Poverty! _It is the combination that devils

invented to make a hell on earth._"

All eyes were fastened on her white face now, and she was rushing on,

her words, hot and impassioned, striking firm on every point she made.

"Let me give you a case. In a home where comfort is--or wealth--a mother

sits, watching by night and day the awful hand of Death reach nearer,

closer to her precious babe, and nothing that skill or science can

suggest will stay the hand or heal the aching heart; and yet there is

comfort in the thought that all was done that love and wealth and skill

could do, and that it was Nature's way. But take from her the comfort of

that thought. She watches with the same poor, breaking heart, but

with the knowledge, now, to keep her company, that science might, ah!

_could_, push back the end, could even cure her babe if but the means to

pay for skill and change and wholesome food and air were hers. Is that

no added pang? Is poverty no curse to her?--a curse the deeper for

her depth of love? The rich know naught of this. It gives to life its

wildest agony, to love its deepest hurt."

She paused. There was a slight stir as if some one had thought to offer

applause, and then the silence fell again, and she began anew, with

shining eyes and cheeks aflame. She swayed a little as she spoke and

clutched the chair as for support. Her voice grew hoarse, and trembled,

and she fixed her gaze upon a vacant chair:

"But let me tell you of another case. A stone's throw from this hall,

where pretty things are said week after week--and kindly meant, I

know--of poverty and love--of the blessedness of these--there is a

living illustration, worth more than all the theories ever spun, to tell

you what 'realities of life' must be where love is great and poverty

holds sway. Picture, with me, the torture and despair of a refined and

cultured woman who watches hour by hour the long months through, and

sees the creeping feet of mental wreck, and physical decay, and knows

the mortal need of care and calm for him who is the whole of life to

her, and for the want of that which others waste and hold as dross he

must work on and on, hastening each day the end _he_ does not see, which

shall deprive him of all of life except the power for ill.... She will

be worse than widowed and alone, for ever by her side sits Want, for

him, tearing at every chord of heart and soul--not for herself--but for

that dearer one, wrecked in the prime of life and left a clod endowed

only with strength for cruel wrong, whose hand would sheath a knife in

her dear heart and laugh with maniac glee at his mad deeds. She saw the

end. She knew long months ago what was to be, if he must toil and strain

his nerve and brain for need of that which goes from knave to knave, and

hoards itself within cathedral walls, where wise men meet to teach

the poor contentment with their lot! She knew _he_ must not know; the

knowledge of the shadow must be kept from _his_ dear brain until the

very end, by smiles, and cheer, and merry jest from her. Who dare tell

_her_ that riches are a curse? and prate of 'dross' and call on heaven

to witness that its loss is only gain of joy and harbinger of higher,

holier things? Who dare call _her_ as witness for the bliss of poverty

with love?"

She slowly raised her hand and, with a quick-drawn breath, pressed it

against her side, and with her eyes still fastened on the vacant chair,

and tears upon her cheeks, falling unchecked upon her heaving bosom, she

held each listener silent and intent on every word she spoke. The time

allotted anyone was long since overrun; but no one thought of that, and

she went on:

"'With love!' Ah, there is where the iron can burn and scar and open

every wound afresh each day, make poverty a curse, a blight, a scourge,

a vulture, iron-beaked, with claws of burning steel, that leave no nerve

untouched, no drop of blood unshed.

"'With love!' 'Tis there the hand of Poverty can deal the deadliest

blows, and show, as nowhere else on earth, the value of that slandered,

hoarded thing called wealth."

There blazed into her face a fierce, indignant light, her voice swelled

out and struck upon the ear like fire-bells in the dead of night:

"'The root of evil!'--'poverty with love!' Hypocrisy, in purple velvet

robed, behind stained glass, with strains of music falling on its ears,

with table spread in banquet-hall below, bethought itself to argue thus

to those itself had robbed; while, thoughtless of its meaning and its

birth, the echo of its lying, treacherous words comes from the pallid

lips of many a wretch whose life has been a failure and an agony because

of that which he himself extols. A lie once born contains a thousand

lives, and holds at bay the struggling, feeble truth, if but that lie be

fathered by a priest and mothered by a throne--_as this one was!_ 'The

root of evil' is the spring of joy. Decry it those who will. And those

who do _not_ love, perchance, may laugh at all its need can mean; but

to the loving, suffering poor bring no more cant, and cease to voice the

hollow words of Ignorance and Hypocrisy. It is too cruel, and its deadly

breath has long enough polluted sympathy and frozen up the springs

of healthy thought, while sheathing venomed fangs in breaking hearts.

Recast your heartless creeds! Your theories for the poor are built on

these."

She sank back into her chair white and exhausted.

There was a wild burst of applause. A part of the audience, with that

ear for sound and that lack of sense to be found in all such gatherings,

had forgotten that it was not listening to a burst of eloquence which

had been duly written out and committed to memory for the occasion.

But Roland Barker sprang to his feet, held both his hands up, to command

silence, and said, in a scarcely audible voice, as he trembled from head

to foot: "Hush, hush! She has told the truth! She has told the awful

truth! I never saw it all before. Heaven help you to bear it. It seems

to me I cannot!"

Several were pale and weeping. I turned to speak to the woman who had

changed an evening's entertainment into a tragic scene; but she had

slipped out during the excitement. I took Barker's arm and we walked

towards the Avenue together. Neither of us spoke until we reached

Madison Square. Here the poor fellow sank into a seat and pulled me down

beside him.

"Don't talk to me about theories after that," he said. "Great God! I am

more dead than alive. I feel fifty years older than when I went to that

little hall to teach those people how to live by my fine philosophy,

and I truly thought that I had tasted sorrow and found the key to

resignation. Ye gods!"

"Perhaps you have," I said.

"Yes, yes," he replied, impatiently; "but suppose I had to face life day

by day, hour by hour, as that woman pictured it--and she was a lady with

as keen a sense of pain as I--what do you suppose my philosophy would do

for me then? Do you think I could endure it? And I went there to teach

those people how to suffer and be strong!"

"Look here, Barker," I said, "you'd better go home now and go to bed.

You are cold and tired, and this won't help matters any."

"What will?" he asked.