a Francis of Assisi, of a Father Damien. He teaches in night-schools,
conducts Penny Banks, and is grateful to any one who will introduce him
to a desperate social enterprise which no one else will attempt. The
first business of life, he is fond of saying, is not to get good, but
to do good. Of pleasure, in the usual sense of the term, he knows
nothing, and would grudge the expenditure of a sixpence upon himself as
long as he knew a cadger or a decayed washerwoman who seemed to have a
better claim to it. London is for him not a home, but a battlefield,
and his spirit is the spirit of the soldier who dare not forsake his
post.

Many years ago, when I was going for my summer holiday, he wrote me a
reproachful poem, from which I quote a part, because it is the best
index to his own character and the most lucid exposition of his own
attitude to life which I can recall:


The roar of the streets at their loudest
Rises and falls like a tune;
Midday in the heart of London,
Midway in the month of June.

And blue at the end of a valley
I see the ocean gleam,
And a voice like falling water
Speaks to me thro' a dream.

It calls, and it bids me follow;
Ah, how the worn nerves thrill
At the vision of those green pastures