"I don't know," said Father Payne. "Money is one of those curious things--uninteresting if you have enough, tragic if you haven't. I don't think talking about money is vulgar--I think it is simply dull: to discuss poverty is like discussing a disease--to discuss wealth is like talking about food or wine. The poverty that simply humiliates and pinches can't be joked about--it's far too serious for that! Of course, there are men who don't really feel the call of life. Look at our friend Kaye! If Kaye had to live in London lodgings, he wouldn't mind a bit, if he could get to the Museum Reading-Room--he only wants books and his own work--he doesn't want company or music or art or talk or friends. He is wholly indifferent to nasty food or squalor. Poverty is not a real evil to him. If he had money he wouldn't know how to spend it. I read a book the other day about a priest who lived a very devoted life in the slums--he had two rooms in a clergy-house--and there was a chapter in praise of the way in which he endured his poverty. But it was all wrong! What that man really enjoyed was preaching and ceremonial and company--he had a real love of human beings. Well, that man's life was crammed with joy--he got exactly what he wanted all day long. It wasn't a self-sacrificing life--it would have been to you and me--but he no doubt woke day after day, with a prospect of having his whole time taken up with things he thoroughly enjoyed." "But what about the people," I said, "who really enjoy just the sense of power which money gives them, without using it--or the people whose only purpose in using it is the pleasure of being known to have it?" "Oh, of course, they are simply barbarians," said Father Payne, "and it doesn't do _them_ any harm to be poor. No, the tragedy lies in the case of a man with really expansive, generous, civilised instincts, to whom the world is full of wholesome and urgent delights, and whose life is simply starved out of him by poverty. I have a great mind to send you to London for a couple of months, to live on a pound a week, and see what you make of it." "I'll go if you wish it," I said. "It might bring things home to you," said Father Payne, smiling, "but again it probably would not, because it would only be a game--the real pinch would not come. Most people would rather enjoy migrating to hell from heaven for a month--it would just give them a sharper relish for heaven." "But do you really think your poverty hurt you?" I said.