"
"Still I shall see the evils of her complex state of society keenly; and
where is the good I can do?"
"Oh! I can't tell in a minute. But cannot you bravely face these evils,
and learn their nature and causes; and then has God given you no powers to
apply to the discovery of their remedy? Dear Frank, think! It may be very
little you can do--and you may never see the effect of it, any more than
the widow saw the world-wide effect of her mite. Then if all the good and
thoughtful men run away from us to some new country, what are we to do with
our poor dear Old England?"
"Oh, you must run away with the good, thoughtful men--(I mean to consider
that as a compliment to myself, Maggie!) Will you let me wish I had been
born poor, if I am to stay in England? I should not then be liable to this
fault into which I see the rich men fall, of forgetting the trials of the
poor."
"I am not sure whether, if you had been poor, you might not have fallen
into an exactly parallel fault, and forgotten the trials of the rich. It is
so difficult to understand the errors into which their position makes all
men liable to fall. Do you remember a story in 'Evenings at Home,' called
the Transmigrations of Indra? Well! when I was a child, I used to wish I
might be transmigrated (is that the right word?) into an American
slave-owner for a little while, just that I might understand how he must
suffer, and be sorely puzzled, and pray and long to be freed from his
odious wealth, till at last he grew hardened to its nature;--and since
then, I have wished to be the Emperor of Russia, for the same reason.
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