ncreasingly interested in Margaret's mission
work. Nor was there much affectation in this. Philanthropy, anxiety
about the working-classes, is nowhere more serious or in the fashion
than it is in London. Mr. Lyon, wherever he had been, had made a special
study of the various aid and relief societies, especially of the work
for young waifs and strays.

One Sunday afternoon they were returning from the Bloom Street
Mission. Snow covered the ground, the sky was leaden, and the air had a
penetrating chill in it far more disagreeable than extreme cold.

"We also," Mr. Lyon was saying, in continuation of a conversation, "are
making a great effort for the common people."

"But we haven't any common people here," replied Margaret, quickly.
"That bright boy you noticed in my class, who was a terror six months
ago, will no doubt be in the City Council in a few years, and likely
enough mayor."

"Oh, I know your theory. It practically comes to the same thing,
whatever you call it. I couldn't see that the work in New York differed
much from that in London. We who have leisure ought to do something for
the working-classes."

"I sometimes doubt if it is not all a mistake most of our charitable
work. The thing is to get people to do something for themselves."

"But you cannot do away with distinctions?"

"I suppose not, so long as so many people are born vicious, or
incompetent, or lazy. But, Mr. Lyon, how much good do you suppose
condescending charity does?" asked Margaret, firing up in a way the girl
had at times. "I mean the sort that makes the distinctions more evident.
The very fact that you have leisure to meddle in their affairs may be
an annoyance to the folks you try to help by the little palliatives of
charity. What effect upon a wretched city neighborhood do you suppose is
produced by the advent in it of a stylish carriage and a lady in silk,
or even the coming of a well-dressed, prosperous woman in a horse-car,
however gentle and unassuming she may be in this distribution of
sympathy and bounty? Isn't the feeling of inequality intensified? And
the degrading part of it may be that so many are willing to accept this
sort of bounty. And your men of leisure, your club men, sitting in the
windows and seeing the world go by as a spectacle-men who never did an
hour's necessary work in their lives--what effect do you suppose the
sight of them has upon men out of work, perhaps by their own fault,
owing to the same dispositio