The other three may conceivably have told the truth; but this
last man has certainly lied. Therefore I will kill him."
And with that the old and gentle king ran at the man with uplifted sword;
but he was arrested by the roar of happy laughter, which told
the world that there is, after all, something which an Englishman
will not swallow.
The Modern Scrooge
Mr. Vernon-Smith, of Trinity, and the Social Settlement, Tooting,
author of "A Higher London" and "The Boyg System at Work,"
came to the conclusion, after looking through his select and even
severe library, that Dickens's "Christmas Carol" was a very suitable
thing to be read to charwomen. Had they been men they would have been
forcibly subjected to Browning's "Christmas Eve" with exposition,
but chivalry spared the charwomen, and Dickens was funny,
and could do no harm. His fellow worker Wimpole would read things
like "Three Men in a Boat" to the poor; but Vernon-Smith regarded
this as a sacrifice of principle, or (what was the same thing to him)
of dignity. He would not encourage them in their vulgarity;
they should have nothing from him that was not literature.
Still Dickens was literature after all; not literature of a high order,
of course, not thoughtful or purposeful literature, but literature
quite fitted for charwomen on Christmas Eve.
He did not, however, let them absorb Dickens without due
antidotes of warning and criticism.
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