Page:Our Common Land (and other short essays).djvu/102

 expend more in luxurious houses and expensive dinners, cultivate our own intellects, indulge elegant tastes, and float down the stream of Time in happy satisfaction that the poor cannot be bettered by our gifts—in fact, must learn self-help—we meantime going to flower-shows, or picture galleries, or studying systems of political economy? Are the old words, “Bear ye one another’s burdens,” to pass away with the day of coal-tickets? Have the words, “Ye are members one of another,” ceased to be true because our tract and dole distribution has broken down? Are there no voices still speaking in our hearts the old commandment, “Love one another?” Is that love to be limited henceforward to the pleasant acquaintances who call upon us, and like the same poets, and can talk about Rome and the last clever book? Or is it, as of old, to go forth and gather in the feeble, the out-of-the-way, the poor? Is humanity, is nationality, is citizenship too large for our modern love or