MANY PEOPLE ARE GOOD

who would not be so good were they poorer, but the Irish in Ireland are perhaps the poorest and at the same time the most pious people of whom we read or hear.  “Poverty makes man satirical, soberly, sadly, bitterly satirical,” says Friswell.  “Men praise it,” says Alexander Smith,

“AS THE AFRICAN WORSHIPS MUMBO JUMBO—­

from terror of the malign power, and a desire to propitiate it.”  “It oft deprives a man of all spirit and virtue,” says Ben Franklin; “it is hard for an empty bag to stand upright.”

THE SCENES OF DARKEST POVERTY

in this land of ours are surely the results of ignorance and folly.  With the crops which follow each other in our favored region of the earth, and with membership in any mutual aid society, the industrious poor man of America has an assurance that no picture so black can be drawn of his lot “in the rainy day.”  We cannot reform human nature.  When men cheat, steal, lie, and remain idle, they must suffer the results of their deeds, and, at present, those whom they drag down with them must also suffer.  But, with industry and sobriety assured,

THE FANGS OF POVERTY

have been drawn, for the poor man in sickness receives his support, and in health contributes his small share to his sick brother.  In leaving this painful branch of so vital a portion of any book devoted to the improvement of humanity, let us abjure each other to fly from the sins of idleness and waste, that make this dark panorama in a world which could be bright, and which, rolling along in its foolish fashion, even now gives promise of exceeding joy in the future.  Work and save and give work!  This is the light of the world, the open sesame of the millennium?  Let us come again to the follies of

FALSE POVERTY.

How ridiculous that one should suffer from want of a frill or a furbelow!  “I do not call a healthy young man, cheerful in his mind and vigorous in his arms, I cannot call such a man poor,” says the eloquent Edmund Burke; “I cannot pity my kind as a kind, merely because they are men.”  “It is the great privilege of poverty” says Dr. Johnson, “to be happy unenvied, to be healthy without physic, and to be secure without guard.”  Is it not ridiculous for the poor man, by aping the habits of the rich, to spurn some of the greatest blessings attaching to our life?  Thus, as Dr. Johnson says: 

“POVERTY, IN LARGE CITIES