I am your sister, bone
of your bone; one God made us: ye must help me!" They answer,
"No; impossible: thou art no sister of ours." But she proves
her sisterhood; her typhus-fever kills _them:_ they actually
were her brothers, though denying it! Had man ever to go lower
for a proof?

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* _Observations on the Management of the Poor in Scotland:_ By
William Pulteney Alison, M.D. (Edinburgh, 1840)
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For, as indeed was very natural in such case, all government of
the Poor by the Rich has long ago been given over to Supply-and-
demand, Laissez-faire and such like, and universally declared to
be 'impossible.' "You are no sister of ours; what shadow of
proof is there? Here are our parchments, our padlocks, proving
indisputably our money-safes to be _ours,_ and you to have no
business with them. Depart! It is impossible!"--Nay, what
wouldst thou thyself have us do? cry indignant readers. Nothing,
my friends,--till you have got a soul for yourselves again. Till
then all things are 'impossible.' Till then I cannot even bid
you buy, as the old Spartans would have done, two-pence worth of
powder and lead, and compendiously shoot to death this poor Irish
Widow: even that is 'impossible' for you. Nothing is left but
that she prove her sisterhood by dying, and infecting you with
typhus. Seventeen of you lying dead will not deny such proof
that she was flesh of your flesh; and perhaps some of the living
may lay it to heart.

'Impossible:' of a certain two-legged animal with feathers, it
is said if you draw a distinct chalk-circle round him, he sits
imprisoned, as if girt with the iron ring of Fate; and will die
there, though within sight of victuals,--or sit in sick misery
there, and be fatted to death. The name of this poor two-legged
animal is--Goose; and they make of him, when well fattened,
_Pate de foie gras,_ much prized by some!

Chapter III

Gospel of Dilettantism

But after all, the Gospel of Dilettantism, producing a Governing
Class who do not govern, nor understand in the least that they
are bound or expected to govern, is still mournfuler than that of
Mammonism. Mammonism, as we said, at least works; this goes
idle. Mammonism has seized some portion of the message of Nature
to man; and seizing that, and following it, will seize and
appropriate more and more of Nature's message: but Dilettantism
has missed it wholly. 'Make money:' that will mean witha