which shall drain us of all the healthy, strong, and brave among
the lower classes, and leave us, as a just punishment for our
sins, only the cripple, the drunkard, and the beggar.

Yet these clubs MUST be carried on. They make life a little more
possible; they lighten hearts, if but for a moment; they inculcate
habits of order and self-restraint, which may be useful when the
poor man finds himself in Canada or Australia. And it is a cruel
utilitarianism to refuse to palliate the symptoms because you
cannot cure the disease itself. You will give opiates to the
suffering, who must die nevertheless. Let him slip into his grave
at least as painlessly as you can. And so you must use these
charitable societies, remembering all along what a fearful and
humbling sign the necessity for them is of the diseased state of
this England, as the sportula and universal almsgiving was of the
decadence of Rome.

However, the work has to be done; and such as it is, it is
especially fitted for young unmarried ladies. It requires no deep
knowledge of human nature. It makes them aware of the amount of
suffering and struggling which lies around them, without bringing
them in that most undesirable contact with the coarser forms of
evil which house-visitation must do; and the mere business habits
of accuracy and patience to which it compels them, are a valuable
practical schooling for them themselves in after-life. It is
tiresome and unsentimental drudgery, no doubt; but perhaps all the
better training on that account. And, after all, the magic of
sweetness, grace, and courtesy may shed a hallowing and humanising
light over the meanest work, and the smile of God may spread from
lip to lip, and the light of God from eye to eye, even between the