Meanwhile Ruskin practised what he preached. He did not preach renunciation; he was not a Pessimist any more than an Optimist. Sometimes he felt he was not doing enough; he knew very well that others thought so. I remember his saying, in his rooms at Oxford in one of those years: "Here I am, trying to reform the world, and I suppose I ought to begin with myself, I am trying to do St. Benedict's work, and I ought to be a saint. And yet I am living between a Turkey carpet and a Titian, and drinking as much tea"--taking his second cup--"as I can _swig_!" That was the way he put it to an undergraduate; to a lady friend he wrote later on, "I'm reading history of early saints, too, for my Amiens book, and feel that I ought to be scratched, or starved, or boiled, or something unpleasant; and I don't know if I'm a saint or a sinner in the least, in mediæval language. How did the saints feel themselves, I wonder, about their saintship!" If he had forsaken all and followed the vocation of St. Francis,--he has discussed the question candidly in "Fors" for May, 1874--would not his work have been more effectual, his example more inspiring? Conceivably: but that was not his mission. His gospel was not one of asceticism; it called upon no one for any sort of suicide, or even martyrdom. He required of his followers that they should live their lives to the full in "Admiration, Hope and Love": and not that they should sacrifice themselves in fasting and wearing of camels'-hair coats. He wished them to work, to be honest, and just, in all things immediately attainable. He asked the tenth of their living--not the widow's two mites; and it was deeply painful to him to find, sometimes, that they had so interpreted his teaching: as when he wrote, later, to Miss Beever: "One of my poor 'Companions of St. George' who has sent me, not a widow's but a parlour-maid's (an old schoolmistress) 'all her living,' and whom I found last night, dying, slowly and quietly, in a damp room, just the size of your study (which her landlord won't mend the roof of), by the light of a single tallow candle,--dying, I say, _slowly_ of consumption, not yet near the end, but contemplating it with sorrow, mixed partly with fear lest she should not have done all she could for her children! The sight of this and my own shameful comforts, three wax candles and blazing fire and dry roof, and Susie and Joanie for friends! Oh me, Susie, what _is_ to become of me in the next world, who have in this life all my good things!"