A warm wind in the cold night of despair
Dec. 22nd, 2008 11:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecunium the weeks just before Christmas of 1933 — 75 years ago — a mysterious offer appeared in The Repository, the daily newspaper here. It was addressed to all who were suffering in that other winter of discontent known as the Great Depression.
Read the letters in the sidebar. They are heartbreaking, and one wonders at the man who was willing to shoulder the burdens of trying to help so many people. He couldn't solve their problems, the money wasn't there.
What he could do was offer them both a soup&ccela;on of solace, and the hope which comes of knowing one is not completely adrift.
There are times when each of us is dependent on the kindness of strangers.
There are times when each of us can be such strangers (even to the coins in the bin of some charity). We are awash in a mantra of, "they brought it on themselves (unless they were Wall Street tycoons, or Treasury Secretaries, then there was no way to see it coming) and will have bear the pains of their mistakes."
Balderdash.
As Marley says in "A Christmas Carol" "Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said "I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!"
And I think, for all that he met as pointless an end as anyone might (read the story to find out), we can probably say of him...
He ...[was] as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!
Hear!Hear! God bless Us, Every One!
Read the letters in the sidebar. They are heartbreaking, and one wonders at the man who was willing to shoulder the burdens of trying to help so many people. He couldn't solve their problems, the money wasn't there.
What he could do was offer them both a soup&ccela;on of solace, and the hope which comes of knowing one is not completely adrift.
There are times when each of us is dependent on the kindness of strangers.
There are times when each of us can be such strangers (even to the coins in the bin of some charity). We are awash in a mantra of, "they brought it on themselves (unless they were Wall Street tycoons, or Treasury Secretaries, then there was no way to see it coming) and will have bear the pains of their mistakes."
Balderdash.
As Marley says in "A Christmas Carol" "Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said "I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!"
And I think, for all that he met as pointless an end as anyone might (read the story to find out), we can probably say of him...
He ...[was] as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!
Hear!Hear! God bless Us, Every One!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 07:29 am (UTC)Also, "baldersash" is the best tyop ever. *ponders what a baldersash might look like*
no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 10:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 08:19 pm (UTC)Aaaugh!
(None of my userpics are quite right for this, but holly seems closest.)
no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 12:42 pm (UTC)My favorite lines:
"I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it."
"It is required of every man . . . that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"
Someone asked me the other day, in a rather rancorous exchange, if I want to believe that people can change. Want to? I have to!
no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 08:39 pm (UTC)May I repost
Date: 2008-12-23 10:38 pm (UTC)Re: May I repost
Date: 2008-12-23 10:49 pm (UTC)Let me fix the tyops, but feel free.
Re: May I repost
Date: 2008-12-24 12:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-23 11:44 pm (UTC)