e you ever read Carlyle's FRENCH REVOLUTION?" "No" "I will lend it
to you." "If you do, I will read it."

"How about poetry, what poets do you like?" "The minor poets of two
hundred years ago, Herrick, Churchill, Shenstone and others." "Why do
you like them?" "They are so pretty, so easy to understand, you know
what they mean; they speak of beauty, and flowers and love, their
language is tuneful and sweet." Thus the grimy old shoemaker spoke, but
I continued: "What about the present-day poets?" Swift came the reply,
"We have got none." This was a staggerer, but I suggested: "What about
Kipling?" "Too slangy and Coarse!" "Austin?" "Don't ask me." "What of
Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning?" "Well, Wordsworth is too prosy, you
have to read such a lot to get a little; Tennyson is a bit sickly
and too sentimental, I mean with washy sentiment; Browning I cannot
understand, he is too hard for me."

"Now let us talk: about dramatists; you have read Shakespeare?" "Yes,
every play again and again." "Which do you like best?" "I like them all,
the historical and the imaginative; I have never seen one acted, but to
me King Lear is his masterpiece."

So we left him doubled up in his chair, in his grime and poverty,
lighting up his poor one room with great creations, bearing his heavy
burdens, never repining, thinking great thoughts and re-enacting great
events, for his mind to him was a kingdom.

The next day my friend sent a dozen well-selected books, but the old
shoemaker never sought or looked for any assistance.

Only a few doors away we happened on a slum tragedy. We stood in a queer
little house of one room up and one down stairs. Let me picture
the scene! A widow was seated at her machine sewing white buckskin
children's boots. Time, five o'clock in the afternoon; she had sat there
for many hours, and would continue to sit till night was far advanced.

Suddenly a girl of twelve burst in and threw herself into her mother's
arms, crying, "Oh, mother, mother, I have lost the scholarship! Oh,
mother, the French was too hard for me!" To our surprise the mother
seemed intensely relieved, and said, "Thank God for that!"

But the girl wept! After a time we inquired, and found that the girl,
having passed the seventh standard at an elementary school, had been
attending a higher grade school, where she had been entered for a
competitive examination at a good class secondary school. If she
obtained it, the widow would have been c