"He pisoned
my soul. He ruined me with promiskus charity. Whenever I was stoney-broke
'e give me doles in aid, 'e did. 'E wos werry bad to me, 'e wos. 'E
destroyed my self-respeck, druv me to drink, broke up my home, and druv
my darters on the streets."
"This is what comes of undisciplined compassion," observed the
gold-spectacled gentleman, glowering at me. "The integrity and virtue of
a whole family sacrificed to the gratification of thy altruistic
emotions!"
"Stand out of the way!" I cried to the burly man; "I wish to leave my own
house."
"And carry thy rudeness abroad?" he retorted indignantly. "Perchance thou
wouldst like to go to the Continent, and swagger through Europe clad in
thy loud-patterned checks and thine insular self-sufficiency."
I tried to move him out of the way by brute force, and we wrestled, and
he threw me. I heard myself strike the floor with a thud.
Rubbing my eyes, instead of my back, I discovered that I was safe in my
reading-chair, and that it was the lady novelist's novel that had made
the noise. I picked it up, but I still seemed to see the reproachful eyes
of a thousand tormentors, and hear their objurgations. Yet I had none of
the emotions of Scrooge, no prickings of conscience, no ferment of good
resolutions.
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