sured numerically.... April was
nearly over, but the unsightly heaps that the snows had covered were not
yet cleared away. Humped, they were, among the children. This is a
world-old picture--one that need not be finished.

Monte was not a good shot, not a good workman, not a good father--a
burden and bad odour everywhere, a tainter of the town and the blood of
the human race. That, which was gathered about him was as pitifully bred
as reared. Monte's one value lay in his horrible exemplarship. He was a
complete slum microcosm, without which no civilisation has yet arrived.
Monte has given me more to think about than any of the happier people.
In his own mute way, he reminds each man of the depths, furnishes the
low mark of the human sweep, and keeps us from forgetting the world as
it is, the myriads of bad workmen of which the leaning cities are made.

Sitting there by the rock, letting the hours go by--and in his own weak
heart, my neighbour knew that he wouldn't "hit one of them geese." All
his life he had failed. Nature had long since ceased trying to tempt him
into real production. Even his series of natural accidents was doubtless
exhausted. That is the pace that kills--that sitting.

I went on to the forge of the workman. We talked together. I sat by
while he made the thing I wanted, which was not an ornament simply. He
will always be identified there in the oak, an excellent influence; just
as I think of him when I save the wood in the open fireplace, because of
the perfect damper he made for the stone chimney. Monte was still there
when I went back. The problem of him returned to mind after the
freshening of the forge.

He belongs to us as a people, and we have not done well by him. We did
not help him to find his work. We did not consider his slowness, nor the
weariness of his flesh, the sickness he came with, nor the
impoverishment of his line. We are not finding their work for his
children. We have sent them home from school because they were not
clean. We complain that they waste what we give them; that they are
harder on the shoes we furnish, than are our own children. We do not
inquire with wisdom into their life, to learn on which side of the human
meridian they stand--whether their disease is decadence and senility of
spiritual life, or whether their spines are but freshly lifted from the
animal levels.

As a purely physical aggregate--if our civilisation be that--our
business is quickly to extermin