"I thought yours was a free country," said my policeman conductor.
"So it is," I told him, "freedom to poison yourself and your neighbor
excepted." He shook his head, and we went on.
But these were mere divergences of practice. The principle is
not affected. It was clear enough that in London, as in New York,
it was less a question of transforming human nature in the tenant
than of reforming it in the landlord; At St. Giles I found side by
side with the work-house a church, a big bath and wash-house, and
a school. It was the same at Seven Dials. At every step it recalled
the Five Points. To the one as to the other, steeped in poverty and
crime, had come the road-builder, the missionary, the school-teacher,
and let light in together. And in their track was following, rather
faster there than here as yet, the housing reformer with his atoning
scheme of philanthropy and five per cent. That holds the key. In
the last analysis it is a question of how we rate the brotherhood,
what per cent we will take. My neighbor at table in my London
boarding-house meant that, though he put it in a way all his own.
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