I am grateful to remember that I was too uncertain to
be severe, although I held to my instructions. He did not come
again for relief, but worked for two days digging on the canal,
where he contracted pneumonia and died a week later. I have
never lost trace of the two little children he left behind him,
although I cannot see them without a bitter consciousness that it
was at their expense I learned that life cannot be administered
by definite rules and regulations; that wisdom to deal with a
man's difficulties comes only through some knowledge of his life
and habits as a whole; and that to treat an isolated episode is
almost sure to invite blundering.
It was also during this winter that I became permanently
impressed with the kindness of the poor to each other; the woman
who lives upstairs will willingly share her breakfast with the
family below because she knows they "are hard up"; the man who
boarded with them last winter will give a month's rent because he
knows the father of the family is out of work; the baker across
the street who is fast being pushed to the wall by his downtown
competitors, will send across three loaves of stale bread because
he has seen the children looking longingly into his window and
suspects they are hungry. There are also the families who,
during times of business depression, are obliged to seek help
from the county or some benevolent society, but who are
themselves most anxious not to be confounded with the pauper
class, with whom indeed they do not in the least belong.
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