Sevenoaks | Page 8

a vengeance," burst out Miss Butterworth.
"Excuse me, Miss Butterworth; let me repeat, that it must be made to seem a hardship to go to the poor-house. Let us say that we have accomplished this very desirable result. So far, so good. Give our system whatever credit may belong to it, and still let us frankly acknowledge that we have suffering left that ought to be alleviated. How much? In what way? Here we come into contact with another class of facts. Paupers have less of sickness and death among them than any-other class in the community. There are paupers in our establishment that have been there for twenty-five years--a fact which, if it proves anything, proves that a large proportion of the wants of our present civilization are not only artificial in their origin, but harmful in their gratifications. Our poor are compelled to go back nearer to nature--to old mother nature--and they certainly get a degree of compensation for it. It increases the expenses of the town, to be sure."
"Suppose we inquire of them," struck in Miss Butterworth again, "and find out whether they would not rather be treated better and die earlier."
"Paupers are hardly in a position to be consulted in that way," responded Mr. Snow, "and the alternative is one which, considering their moral condition, they would have no right to entertain."
Miss Butterworth had sat through this rather desultory disquisition with what patience she could command, breaking in upon it impulsively at various points, and seen that it was drifting nowhere--at least, that it was not drifting toward the object of her wishes. Then she took up the burden of talk, and carried it on in her very direct way.
"All you say is well enough, I suppose," she began, "but I don't stop to reason about it, and I don't wish to. Here is a lot of human beings that are treated like brutes--sold every year to the lowest bidder, to be kept. They go hungry, and naked, and cold. They are in the hands of a man who has no more blood in his heart than there is in a turnip, and we pretend to be Christians, and go to church, and coddle ourselves with comforts, and pay no more attention to them than we should if their souls had gone where their money went. I tell you it's a sin and a shame, and I know it. I feel it. And there's a gentleman among 'em, and his little boy, and they must be taken out of that place, or treated better in it. I've made up my mind to that, and if the men of Sevenoaks don't straighten matters on that horrible old hill, then they're just no men at all."
Mr. Snow smiled a calm, self-respectful smile, that said, as plainly as words could say: "Oh! I know women: they are amiably impulsive, but impracticable."
"Have you ever been there?" inquired Miss Butterworth, sharply.
"Yes, I've been there."
"And conscience forbid!" broke in Mrs. Snow, "that he should go again, and bring home what he brought home that time. It took me the longest time to get them out of the house!"
"Mrs. Snow! my dear! you forget that we have a stranger present."
"Well, I don't forget those strangers, anyway!"
The three Misses Snow tittered, and looked at one another, but were immediately solemnized by a glance from their father.
Mrs. Snow, having found her tongue--a characteristically lively and emphatic one--went on to say:--
"I think Miss Butterworth is right. It's a burning shame, and you ought to go to the meeting to-morrow, and put it down."
"Easily said, my dear," responded Mr. Snow, "but you forget that Mr. Belcher is Buffum's friend, and that it is impossible to carry any measure against him in Sevenoaks. I grant that it ought not to be so. I wish it were otherwise; but we must take things as they air."
"To take things as they air," was a cardinal aphorism in Mr. Snow's budget of wisdom. It was a good starting-point for any range of reasoning, and exceedingly useful to a man of limited intellect and little moral courage. The real truth of the case had dawned upon Miss Butterworth, and it had rankled in the breast of Mrs. Snow from the beginning of his pointless talk. He was afraid of offending Robert Belcher, for not only did his church need repairing, but his salary was in arrears, and the wolf that had chased so many up the long hill to what was popularly known as Tom Buffum's Boarding House he had heard many a night, while his family was sleeping, howling with menace in the distance.
Mrs. Snow rebelled, in every part of her nature, against the power which had cowed her reverend companion. There is nothing that so goads a spirited woman to madness