BY WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT (Ex-president of the United States; born 1857) "What is a man to do who is starving, and cannot find work?" "God knows." The Parish Workhouse BY GEORGE CRABBE (See page 29) Theirs is yon house that holds the parish poor, Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door; There, where the putrid vapors flagging play, And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day; There children dwell who know no parents' care; Parents, who know no children's love, dwell there; Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed, Forsaken wives and mothers never wed; Dejected widows with unheeded tears, And crippled age with more than childhood-fears; The lame, the blind, and--far the happiest they!-- The moping idiot and the madman gay. Here too the sick their final doom receive, Here brought amid the scenes of grief to grieve, Where the loud groans from some sad chamber flow, Mixed with the clamors of the crowd below; Here, sorrowing, they each kindred sorrow scan, And the cold charities of man to man: Whose laws indeed for ruined age provide, And strong compulsion plucks the scrap from pride; But still that scrap is bought with many a sigh, And pride imbitters what it can't deny. Say ye, oppressed by some fantastic woes, Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose; Who press the downy couch while slaves advance With timid eye, to read the distant glance; Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease, To name the nameless ever-new disease; Who with mock patience dire complaints endure, Which real pain and that alone can cure: How would ye bear in real pain to lie, Despised, neglected, left alone to die? How would ye bear to draw your latest breath Where all that's wretched paves the way for death? BY KENKŌ HOSHI (Japanese Buddhist priest of the Fourteenth Century) It is desirable for a ruler that no man should suffer from cold and hunger under his rule. Man cannot maintain his standard of morals when he has no ordinary means of living. The Bread of Affliction (_From "Children of the Ghetto"_) BY ISRAEL ZANGWILL (English poet and novelist, born 1864; has written with tenderness and charm of the struggles of Judaism in contact with modern commercialism) At half-past five the stable-doors were thrown open, and the crowd pressed through a long, narrow white-washed stone corridor into a barn-like compartment, with a white-washed ceiling traversed by wooden beams. Within this compartment, and leaving but a narrow circumscribing border, was a sort of cattle-pen, into which the paupers crushed, awaiting amid discomfort and universal jabber the divine moment. The single jet of gas-light depending from the ceiling flared upon the strange simian faces, and touched them into a grotesque picturesqueness that would have delighted Doré.