"You must work that out for yourself.
What might seem important to me might not interest you
at all--and if you weren't interested you wouldn't
do anything. But this I do say to you, Joel--and I've
said it to myself every day for this last year or more,
and had you in mind all the time, too--if I had made
a great fortune, and I sat about in purple and fine linen
doing nothing but amuse myself in idleness and selfishness,
letting my riches accumulate and multiply themselves without
being of use to anybody, I should be ASHAMED to look
my fellow-creatures in the face! You were born here.
You know what London slums are like. You know what Clare
Market was like--it's bad enough still--and what the Seven
Dials and Drury Lane and a dozen other places round here
are like to this day. That's only within a stone's throw.
Have you seen Charles Booth's figures about the London
poor? Of course you haven't--and it doesn't matter.
You KNOW what they are like. But you don't care.
The misery and ignorance and filth and hopelessness of two
or three hundred thousand people doesn't interest you.
You sit upon your money-bags and smile. If you want the truth,
I'm ashamed to have you for a brother!"
"Well, I'm damned!" was Thorpe's delayed and puzzled
comment upon this outburst. He looked long at his sister,
in blank astonishment.
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