Page:The Book of the Homeless (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916).djvu/225

HENRY JAMES straight as to form the vivid moral that asks to be drawn. The deepest impression from the sore human stuff with which such observation deals is that of its being strong and sound in an extraordinary degree for the conditions producing it. These conditions represent, one feels at the best, the crude and the waste, the ignored and neglected state; and under the sense of the small care and scant provision that have attended such hearty and happy growths, struggling into life and air with no furtherance to speak of, the question comes pressingly home of what a better economy might, or verily mightn't, result in. If this abundance all slighted and unencouraged can still comfort us, what would n't it do for us tended and fostered and cultivated.? That is my moral, for I believe in Culture—speaking strictly now of the honest and of our own congruous kind. [ 125 ]