In considering this question of "Poverty"
the comparison is generally drawn between the social condition
of St. James's and Bt. Giles's. We are too apt to forget that
" poverty " is nothing, so long as it is not felt. The truth is
rudely brought homo to us by contrast and comparison. For years
I could not afford more than a "shilling's-worth" at the theatre;
but I derived as much enjoyment out of my shilling's - worth at
the Lyceum, seeing Charles Mathews and Madame Vestris ; or at
the Haymarket, seeing Leigh Murray and Mrs. Stirling; as the stalls
or boxes have given me to see Fechter and Kate Terry, or Irving
and Ellen Terry. A day at Epping Forest or Greenwich was something
to anticipate with delight for months beforehand, and think of
afterwards; it is a here now to know "where to go," and a few
weeks at Scarborough, Matlock, Ilfracoombe, Tenby, Llandudno,
etc., are forgotten as seen as over. If you mix with people better
off than yourself, or send your children to a school where the
children are of a richer class, they naturally feel the contrast
between their patched-up clothes and the newer or better clothing
of their companions; but before they go out into society better
off, so long as they have had enough to eat and drink, they have
not known what "poverty" is; it is when they are able to compare,
that the truth gradually · becomes clear to them. In "All in a
Garden Fair," Walter Besant describes the effect upon a poor teacher,
when he has £1,200 a year left him. Suddenly the cottage he has
lived in for so many years seems to have grown very small; he
is dissatisfied with the house. "And the furniture, my
