As we came out from the cloisters, and walked along by the churchyard of
the Abbey, a woman came begging behind us very earnestly. "A bit of
bread," she said, "and I will give you a thousand blessings! Hunger is
hard to bear. O kind gentleman and kind lady, a penny for a bit of
bread! It is a hard thing that gentlemen and ladies should see poor
people wanting bread, and make no difference whether they are good or
bad." And so she followed us almost all round the Abbey, assailing our
hearts in most plaintive terms, but with no success; for she did it far
too well to be anything but an impostor, and no doubt she had breakfasted
better, and was likely to have a better dinner, than ourselves. And yet
the natural man cries out against the philosophy that rejects beggars.
It is a thousand to one that they are impostors, but yet we do ourselves
a wrong by hardening our hearts against them. At last, without turning
round, I told her that I should give her nothing,--with some asperity,
doubtless, for the effort to refuse creates a bitterer repulse than is
necessary. She still followed us a little farther, but at last gave it
up, with a deep groan. I could not have performed this act of heroism on
my first arrival from America.
Whether the beggar-woman had invoked curses on us, and Heaven saw fit to
grant some slight response, I know not, but it now began to rain on my
wife's velvet; so I put her and J----- into a cab, and hastened to
ensconce myself in Westminster Abbey while the shower should last.
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