To suppose that one in every two
thousand is willing to the extent of an hour or two every week to
follow at a distance the example of his acknowledged Master does not,
after all, seem so very extravagant, For my own part, I believe that
for every post there will be a dozen volunteers. Is that extravagant?
It means no more than a poor 1 per cent, of such distant followers.
Those who go at all among the poor, and try to find out for themselves
something of what goes on beneath the surface, presently become aware
of a most remarkable movement, whispers of which from time to time
reach the upper strata. All over London--no doubt over other great
towns as well, but I know no other great town--there are at this day
living, for the most part in obscurity, unpaid, and in some cases
alone, men and women of the gentle class, among the poor, working for
them, thinking for them, and even in some cases thinking with them.
One such case I know where a gentlewoman has spent the greater part of
her life among the industrial poor of the East End, so that she has
come to think as they think, to look on things from their point of
view, though not to talk as they talk. Some of these men are vicars,
curates, Nonconformist ministers, Roman Catholic clergymen; some of
the women are Roman Catholic sisters and nuns; others are sham nuns,
Anglicans, who seem to find that an ugly dress keeps them more
steadily to their work; others are deaconesses or Bible-women.
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