many a day: she keeps her accounts still,
however--quite steadily--doing them at nights, carefully, with
her bandage off, and through acutest spectacles (the only modern
scientific invention she cares about). You must put your ear down
ever so close to her lips to hear her speak; and then you will
start at what she first whispers, for it will certainly be, 'Why
shouldn't that little crossing-sweeper have a feather on its
head, as well as your own child?' Then you may ask justice, in an
amazed manner, How she can possibly be so foolish as to think
children could sweep crossings with feathers on their heads? Then
you stoop again, and justice says--still in her dull, stupid
way--'Then, why don't you, every other Sunday, leave your child
to sweep the crossing, and take the little sweeper to church in a
hat and feather?' Mercy on us (you think), what will she say
next? And you answer, of course, that you don't, because
everybody ought to remain content in the position in which
Providence has placed them.

"Ah, my friends, that's the gist of the whole question. _Did_
Providence put them in that position, or did _you_? You knock a
man into a ditch, and then you tell him to remain content in the
'position in which Providence has placed him.' That's modern
Christianity. You say, 'We did not knock him into the ditch.' How
do you know what you have done or are doing? That's just what we
have all got to know, and what we shall never know until the
question with us every morning, is, not how to do the gainful
thing, but how to do the just thing."

These thoughts suggest to us Ruskin, the social economist, for we must
not lose sight of the fact that this greatest of all art critics, this
strong, sane ethical philosopher who has emphasized so forcibly the
possibilities, duties, and responsibilities of the individual in all
his complex relations, is also one of the most enlightened and
broad-visioned economists of our wonderful age. By treatises, essays,
and letters he has striven for a brighter day for the breadwinners. He
has sought to elevate the ideals and tastes of all toilers, while he
has labored unremittingly to secure for them that meed of justice
which is their right, but which has so long been denied them.

So far back as 1868, when few people of position dared advocate so
sane a proposition as the