Page:The poor sisters of Nazareth, Meynell, 1889.djvu/50

44 No questions are asked of man, woman, or child. Only it was found necessary to keep the charity for the unemployed by giving the soup a little before noon. Men at work were tempted to take advantage of a twelve o'clock dole. As it is, the great number of men and the comparative fewness of the women and children are noticeable, and imply long journeys to Hammersmith. On the intensely frosty mornings of midwinter ragged men are to be seen tramping westwards from distances whither it might have been thought that the fame of Nazareth had never penetrated. They straggle out by twos and threes, starting early, and waiting before the door with its cross. Within, they get their hot portions—an excellent olla podrida—in the shed, and eat it on benches grouped at the feet of the great crucifix. It is impossible, looking at these men, silent and uncommunicative and unobservant in their misery, tired with the long tramp that must be heavy payment for a meal, to question the rightness of the Sisters' work of relief. Whatever a riper justice than that of our own time may decide as to the general debt owed by the nation to its poor, the payment of this little matter of