his heart will fill with the care of humanity, and his hands with its
help. Such care will be death to one's own cares, such help balm to
one's own wounds. In a word, he must cultivate, after a simple human
manner, the acquaintance of his neighbors, who would be a neighbor where
a neighbor may be wanted. So shall he fulfil the part left behind of the
work of the Master, which He desires to finish through him.
Of course I do not imagine that Hester understood this. She had no
theory of carriage towards the poor, neither confined her hope of
helping to them. There are as many in every other class needing help as
among the poor, and the need, although it wear different dresses, is
essentially the same in all. To make the light go up in the heart of a
rich man, if a more difficult task, is just as good a deed as to make it
go up in the heart of a poor man. But with her strong desire to carry
help where it was needed, with her genuine feeling of the blood
relationship of all human beings, with her instinctive sense that one
could never begin too soon to do that which had to be done, she was in
the right position to begin; and from such a one opportunity will not be
withheld.
She went one morning into a small shop in Steevens's Road, to buy a few
sheets of music-paper. The woman who kept it had been an acquaintance
almost from the first day of their abode in the neighborhood. In the
course of their talk Mrs. Baldwin mentioned that she was in some anxiety
about a woman in the house who was far from well, and in whom she
thought Mrs. Raymount would be interested.
"Mamma is always ready," said Hester, "to help where she can. Tell me
about her."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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