to pounce upon him
to eat him, and none of them would dare to sleep if he could, owing to
the certainty of his peril should his vigilance be relaxed. From this
baleful picture of the lowest depths of poverty we may rise to
comparatively stupendous heights, and yet be relatively poor as to the
consideration of other conditions of life still above us. Let us, then,
view poverty as

A REAL, ACTIVE, "INCONVENIENCE,"

as the French wit has put it. "One solitary philosopher maybe great,
virtuous and happy in the depth of poverty," says Isaac Iselin, "but not
a whole people." "Poverty" says Lucian, "persuades a man to do and
suffer everything that he may escape from it." "It requires a great deal
of poetry to gild the pill of poverty," says Madame Deluzy; "and then it
will pass for a pleasant dose only in theory; the reality is a failure."
"A generous and noble spirit" says Dionysius, "cannot be expected to
dwell in the breast of men who are struggling for their daily bread."

"HOW LIKE A RAILWAY TUNNEL

is the poor man's life," says Bovee, "with the light of childhood at
one end, the intermediate gloom, and only the glimmer of a future life
at the other extremity!" "Poverty," says Euripides, "possesses this
disease--through want it teaches a man evil." "Poverty," says Saadi,
"snatches the reins out of the hands of pity," which is true only in one
sense.

MANY PEOPLE ARE GOOD

who would not be so good were they poorer, but the Irish in Ireland are
perhaps the poorest and at the same time the most pious people of whom
we read or hear. "Poverty makes man satirical, soberly, sadly, bitterly
satirical," says Friswell. "Men praise it," says Alexander Smith,

"AS THE AFRICAN WORSHIPS MUMBO JUMBO--

from terror of the malign power, and a desire to propitiate it." "It oft
deprives a man of all spirit and virtue," says Ben Franklin; "it is hard
for an empty bag to stand upright."

THE SCENES OF DARKEST POVERTY

in this land of ours are surely the results of ignorance and folly. With
the crops which follow each other in our favored region of the earth,
and with membership in any mutual aid society, the industrious poor man
of America has an assurance that no picture so black can be drawn of his
lot "in the rainy day." We cannot reform human nature. When men cheat,
steal, lie, and remain idle, they must suffer the results of their
deeds, and, at present, those whom they drag down with them must also
suffer. But, wi