bysmal sighs, and hands wrung till they cracked. For a time Wilhelm
went to every address given in these letters, in order to see and hear
for himself, but after awhile his powers of discrimination were
sharpened, and he learned to distinguish between the impositions of
swindlers and professional beggars, and the real distress which has a
claim to sympathy.

By degrees, it is true, he became convinced, even in the chill
dwellings of real poverty, that this was hardly ever entirely
unmerited. Where it had not been brought about by laziness, frivolity,
or drink, its source was to be found in ignorance or incapacity, in
other words, in an inefficient equipment for the battle of life. He
judged all these circumstances, however, to be the outward and visible
signs of obscure natural laws, and that to interfere with rash and
ignorant hands in their workings was as useless as it was unreasonable.
He therefore pondered seriously whether, by denying to a portion of
mankind the qualities indispensable to success in the struggle for
existence, Nature herself did not predestine them to misery and
destruction; whether the irredeemable poor--those who after each help
upward invariably fell back in the former state--were not the
offscourings of humanity, the preservation of whom was a fruitless
task, and altogether against the design of Nature?

Fortunately, he did not allow his deeds of brotherly love to be
darkened by the shadow of these and kindred thoughts. He brought
forward reasons which always ended by triumphing over his cold doubts.
Misery was possibly the outcome of inexorable natural laws, but then
was not compassion the same? The poor were poor under the pressure of
some irresistible force, but did not the charitable act under the same
pressure? Moreover, was Wilhelm so sure that he himself was better
equipped for the race of life than those unfortunates who went under
because they chose a trade for which they were neither mentally nor
physically competent, or because, from laziness or obstinacy, they
insisted on remaining in Berlin, where nobody wanted them, when a few
miles off they might have found all the conditions conducive to their
prosperity? How could he know whether he would have been capable of
earning his living if his father had not left him a plentifully-spread
table? In the rooms that contained so little furniture and so many
emaciated human beings, into which his charitable zeal led him every
day, he pict