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identified their fortunes with these empty-handed people, and who, in

church and chapel, "relief works," and charities, were at least making

an effort towards its mitigation.

Our visit was made in November, 1883, the very year when the Pall

Mall Gazette exposure started "The Bitter Cry of Outcast London,"

and the conscience of England was stirred as never before over this

joyless city in the East End of its capital. Even then, vigorous and drastic plans were being discussed, and a splendid program of municipal

reforms was already dimly outlined. Of all these, however, I had heard

nothing hut the vaguest rumor.

No comfort came to me then from any source, and the painful impression was increased because at the very moment of looking down

the East London street from the top of the omnibus, I had been sharply

and painfully reminded of "The Vision of Sudden Death" which had

confronted De Quincey one summer's night as he was being driven

through rural England on a high mail coach. Two absorbed lovers suddenly appear between the narrow, blossoming hedgerows in the direct

path of the huge vehicle which is sure to crush them to their death. De

Quincey tries to send them a warning shout, but finds himself unable

to make a sound because his mind is hopelessly entangled in an endeavor to recall the exact lines from the "Iliad" which describe the

great cry with which Achilles alarmed all Asia militant. Only after his

memory responds is his will released from its momentary paralysis, and

he rides on through the fragrant night with the horror of the escaped

calamity thick upon him, but he also bears with him the consciousness

that he had given himself over so many years to classic learning —that

when suddenly called upon for a quick decision in the world of life and

death, he had been able to act only through a literary suggestion.

This is what we were all doing, lumbering our minds with literature

that only served to cloud the really vital situation spread before our

eyes. It seemed to me too preposterous that in my first view of the horror of East London I should have recalled De Quincey's literary description of the literary suggestion which had once paralyzed him. In

my disgust it all appeared a hateful, vicious circle which even the apostles of culture themselves admitted, for had not one of the greatest *among the moderns plainly said that "conduct, and not culture, is

three fourths of human life."

For two years in the midst of my distress over the poverty which,