t which resides in the
working class is surprising to us, only because in our preposterous
pride we had supposed them to be baked of different clay than we
are. In the matter of artistic endowment, too, what wonderful
discoveries do we constantly make among poor children, even
among children that come from the lowest dregs of society! What
fine fancy, what prompt response to the appeal of the beautiful, in
spite of all the debasing inheritance!

But it is, in the last analysis, the moral qualities upon which
our respect for human nature rests, and in this respect how often
are we astonished, yes and abashed, when we observe the extent to
which the moral virtues express themselves in the life of those
who, in point of so-called culture, are infinitely our inferiors! What
power of self-sacrifice is displayed by these poor people, whom
sometimes in our wicked moods we are disposed to despise; what
readiness to share the last crust with those who are, I will not say
hungry, but hungrier! Who of us would take into his own house,
his own bedchamber, a dying consumptive, a mere acquaintance, in
order that the last days of the sufferer might be soothed by friendly
nursing? Who of us would make provision in our will to share our
grave with a worthy stranger, in order to avert from him the
dreaded fate of being buried in the Potter's Field? Which of our
young men would be willing to refuse the proffered opportunity of
an education in one of the foremost colleges in the land, in order
to stay with the old folks at home and work at a menial occupation
for their support? Who of us would give up the joys of youth to
devote his whole life to the care of a bed-ridden, half-demented
parent? Yet all of these things and many others like them I have
known to be done by people who live in the tenement houses of
this great city. It sometimes seems as if the angelic aspect of
human nature displayed itself by preference in the house of
poverty, as if those who possessed no other treasure, no other
jewels with which to adorn themselves, were compensated for
their penury in other ways by these priceless gems of the most
unselfish virtue. Such conduct, of course, is not universal. There
are abundant instances of the opposite. But the truth remains that
it is the worth which those who seem to lead the least desirable
lives display toward others that assures us of their own worth.
This, too, is the lesson of the oft-quoted and oft-misunderstood