St. Bernard's: The Romance of a Medical StudentBerdoe, Edward
General
St. Bernard's: The Romance of a Medical Student
Berdoe, Edward
Medical students -- Fiction
Walk through the unlovely streets where the worker dwells in London.
Note the changes that have taken place in them during the past fifty
years. Once there were mansions in them, where their employers dwelt.
Now these deserted places are let off in tenements, since their former
occupants have long ago left them for brighter and wealthier parts of
the town. Grim, dirty, and neglected parish churches stand in the midst
of graveyards filled with the tumble-down monuments of rich residents
whose descendants never visit them, scorning to go east of Temple Bar,
even to pay their respects to the tombs of their ancestors. Within
these temples of prayer the monuments round the walls tell sadly of
better days and a prosperity that contrasts oddly with the decadence of
the present. Hard work here for the clergy, with much begging from
distant and richer parishes to maintain the services and ministrations
of the Church, even in their crippled form. True, money is sent from
the West, but where are the workers? The men and women who could help
the clergy in a hundred ways to mitigate the evil surroundings? And
Lady Millefleurs will have to know, sooner or later, that she has not
charity, though she sell all her goods to feed the poor, and give her
body to be burned, while she will not give herself a living sacrifice
to humanity. How is she to do this? How is she to fulfil the command to
sell all she has and give to the poor? Simple enough. Give up Belgrave
Square and settle in Bethnal Green! Forsake Tyburnia and dwell in
Whitechapel! Then, and not till then, will she follow her Master’s
commands. Very unpleasant, doubtless; but consider what she would
learn. At a great cost she has acquired much human knowledge of a kind,
not enough to keep her, perhaps, from falling into the error of the
often-quoted lady, who wondered why the poor who could not get bread
did not live on those nice twopenny cakes to be had in Bond Street.
What good would be done by this retrogression from progress? Just think
of a few ways of helping the poor. Look at the East End and suburban
vestries, boards of guardians, and public bodies generally. Why are
they so corrupt, so hard to move, so gluttonous and backward? That is
not far to seek. Consider the mental calibre, the social status, the
education and tastes of the men who compose them too generally. The
gentry are far away, where they only see the poor as rare and
interesting objects on which to bestow Bibles, blankets, soup, and
occasional recitations and songs. They spend their days in places where
the clergy are compelled to preserve with care a few exotic paupers as
specimens, that it may be demonstrated now and then that “the poor ye
have always with you.” Granny, in her clean cap, white apron, and neat
gown, sitting in a well-scrubbed room, reading the Bible with the help
of a pair of horn spectacles, by the side of a not depressingly low
fire, is all the idea of poverty with which many a high-born lady has
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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