Norwich bulletin., 1910-02-19
lwritten for The Bulletin.)

To be frankly. openly. honestly poor and to be glad of 1t. Is not that of avarice, covetousness, or envy; no desire to lay field to field, no disposi- ton to hoard for the sake of hoarding, no frantic eagerness to reinvest every dollar lest one, perehance, might be let slip unawares into some foolish we'll Of generosity; hardly to know the meaning of such word as egrab" and graft" above all, never to be guilty of grinding the faces of the poor, op- pressing the widow and the fatherless, or trampling down any one of the All Fathers little ones. Simply to be poor and happy and free; not ashamed; not place and power. and, equally not despising the hufnblest of ones fellow men nor the labor of any honest call ing. To carry no burden of riches, nor it's too frequent, debasing, and su- premely vulgar accompaniment of purse pride, arrogance and insoience: but simply to be poor and free and happy, content with little, living for letting the inessentiais go without re- gret. even with rejoicing.
 It is interesting to note how the dream of this brighter. braver way of meeting existence is creeping into lit erature. I take it as a sign of revolt from the vuigarity of most of the modern novels, which read like the
 
 sIbly Locke began it, with his Beloved Vagabond." Jack Senhouse. Maurice Hewlett's creation, talks to us through two successive novels of the grandeur of Poverty. Temperance. and Sim spiicity," the delight of being poor, the freedom of the unercumbered life, the slavery to possessions, the wearinesS and banalite of houses and lands and breweries and position and preferment and money madness. 'We like. luxury so much" he says, that we are con tent to be bound hand and foot by it-' And again, in recOunting his story, he tells us of discovering that everything you bought with money tied you up, more or less, to that thing; and that the fun you got out of the thing that you bought was as nothing compared to the freedom you lost by getting it." To be sure, not all of us see our way clear to live in a. tilt-cart. and to sleep under a tent of our own stitching. and to fry our midday rasher by the way- side; but many of us might to advan- tage follow his advice to Keep to the high-road, and shed our baggage by degrees" And now comes E. V. Lucas to warn us that "The crying need in is a gospel of poverty to cope with the gospel of riches that is vitiating so- ciety." A gospel of poverty! How re- freshing it sounds!
 "Few persons" remarks a widely known teacher, "succeed in doing much more than carrying their own weight, that is, supporting themselves and their Iamilies respectfully" I wonder how often we remember this. So many are dazzled by the glare and glitter of the noisy rich on the one side, and ap- pa1led by the misery of the hopeless poor on the other, and nauseated with the evidences of money-madness on all sides, that doubt if we often stop to consider how true it is that few heads of families succeed in laying by much more than the little that may be need ed for a rainy day. All honor to the fathers and mothers for doing as much as they do. For. the getting our selves existed" as Carlyle puts it, is by no means an easy task, while the