It varies with every age and every locality, and it is, generally speaking, your ‘silly persons’ who are responsible for its varying standards.  In Japan, a ‘good’ girl would be a girl who would sell her honour in order to afford little luxuries to her aged parents.  In certain hospitable islands of the torrid zone the ‘good’ wife goes to lengths that we should deem altogether unnecessary in making her husband’s guest feel himself at home.  In ancient Hebraic days, Jael was accounted a good woman for murdering a sleeping man, and Sarai stood in no danger of losing the respect of her little world when she led Hagar unto Abraham.  In eighteenth-century England, supernatural stupidity and dulness of a degree that must have been difficult to attain, were held to be feminine virtues—­indeed, they are so still—­and authors, who are always among the most servile followers of public opinion, fashioned their puppets accordingly.  Nowadays ‘slumming’ is the most applauded virtue, and so all our best heroines go slumming, and are ‘good to the poor.’”

“How useful ‘the poor’ are,” remarked MacShaughnassy, somewhat abruptly, placing his feet on the mantelpiece, and tilting his chair back till it stood at an angle that caused us to rivet our attention upon it with hopeful interest.  “I don’t think we scribbling fellows ever fully grasp how much we owe to ‘the poor.’  Where would our angelic heroines and our noble-hearted heroes be if it were not for ‘the poor’?  We want to show that the dear girl is as good as she is beautiful.  What do we do?  We put a basket full of chickens and bottles of wine on her arm, a fetching little sun-bonnet on her head, and send her round among the poor.  How do we prove that our apparent scamp of a hero is really a noble young man at heart?  Why, by explaining that he is good to the poor.

“They are as useful in real life as they are in Bookland.  What is it consoles the tradesman when the actor, earning eighty pounds a week, cannot pay his debts?  Why, reading in the theatrical newspapers gushing accounts of the dear fellow’s invariable generosity to the poor.  What is it stills the small but irritating voice of conscience when we have successfully accomplished some extra big feat of swindling?  Why, the noble resolve to give ten per cent of the net profits to the poor.

“What does a man do when he finds himself growing old, and feels that it is time for him to think seriously about securing his position in the next world?  Why, he becomes suddenly good to the poor.  If the poor were not there for him to be good to, what could he do?  He would be unable to reform at all.  It’s a great comfort to think that the poor will always be with us.  They are the ladder by which we climb into heaven.”