HIND THE BARS

It was quite true, as I had told Uncle Max, that the scheme had been no
new one; it was no sudden emanation from a girl's brain, morbid with
discontent and fruitless longings; it had grown with my youth and had
become part of my environment. As a child the thought had come to me as
I followed my father into one cottage after another in his house-to-house
visitation. He had been a conscientious, hard-working clergyman; in fact,
his work killed him, for he overtasked a constitution that was not
naturally strong. I accompanied my mother, too, in her errands of mercy,
and saw a great deal of the misery engendered by drink, ignorance, and
want of forethought. In the case of the sick poor, the gross
mismanagement and want of cleanly and thrifty habits led to an amount
of discomfort and suffering that even now makes me shudder. The parish
was overgrown and insufficiently worked; the greater part of the
population belonged to the working-classes; dissenting chapels and
gin-palaces flourished. Often did my childish heart ache at the
surroundings of some squalid home, where the parents toiled all day for
worse than naught, just to satisfy their unhealthy cravings, while the
children grew up riotous, half starved, and full of inherited vices.
There was a little child I saw once, a cripple, dying slowly of some sad
spinal disease, lying in a dark corner, on what seemed to me a heap of
rags. Oh, God, I can see that child's face now! I remember when we heard
of its death my mother burst into tears. They were tears of joy, she told
me afterwards, that another suffering child's life was ended; 'and there
are hundreds and hundreds of these little creatures, Ursula,' she said,
'growing up in sin and misery; and the world goes on, and people eat and
drink and are merry, for it is none of their business, and yet it is not
the will of the Father that one of these little ones should perish.'

I had learned much from my father, but still more from my mother.
Uncle Max had called her a good woman, but she was more than that:
she possessed one of those rare unselfish natures that cannot remain
satisfied with their own personal happiness: they wish to include
the whole world. She wanted to inculcate in me her own spirit of
self-sacrifice. I can remember some of her short, trenchant sentences
now.

'Never mind happiness: that is God's gift to a few: do your duty.'

'If you have loved your fellow-creatures sufficiently you will