ce, and that's what they sang.

"To what lengths his tyranny would have gone it is difficult to say, had
not an event happened that brought his power to a premature collapse.
This was the curate's sudden and somewhat unexpected marriage with a very
beautiful burlesque actress who had lately been performing in a
neighbouring town. He gave up the Church on his engagement, in
consequence of his _fiancee's_ objection to becoming a minister's wife.
She said she could never 'tumble to' the district visiting.

"With the curate's wedding the old pauper's brief career of prosperity
ended. They packed him off to the workhouse after that, and made him
break stones."

* * * * *

At the end of the telling of his tale, MacShaughnassy lifted his feet off
the mantelpiece, and set to work to wake up his legs; and Jephson took a
hand, and began to spin us stories.

But none of us felt inclined to laugh at Jephson's stories, for they
dealt not with the goodness of the rich to the poor, which is a virtue
yielding quick and highly satisfactory returns, but with the goodness of
the poor to the poor, a somewhat less remunerative investment and a
different matter altogether.

For the poor themselves--I do not mean the noisy professional poor, but
the silent, fighting poor--one is bound to feel a genuine respect. One
honours them, as one honours a wounded soldier.

In the perpetual warfare between Humanity and Nature, the poor stand
always in the van. They die in the ditches, and we march over their
bodies with the flags flying and the drums playing.

One cannot think of them without an uncomfortable feeling that one ought
to be a little bit ashamed of living in security and ease, leaving them
to take all the hard blows. It is as if one were always skulking in the
tents, while one's comrades were fighting and dying in the front.

They bleed and fall in silence there. Nature with her terrible club,
"Survival of the Fittest"; and Civilisation with her cruel sword, "Supply
and Demand," beat them back, and they give way inch by inch, fighting to
the end. But it is in a dumb, sullen way, that is not sufficiently
picturesque to be heroic.

I remember seeing an old bull-dog, one Saturday night, lying on the
doorstep of a small shop in the New Cut. He lay there very quiet, and
seemed a bit sleepy; and, as he looked savage, nobody disturbed him.
People stepped in and out over him, and occasionally in doing so, one
would accidentally