Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 278: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

‘TOO LATE 261 the donations which they make to charitable institutions — it is a despicable farce! They only give where they know their names will be proclaimed by canting saints at Exeter Hall, or published in the columns of the daily newspapers. And even if they were really charitable and truly bounteous, even if they gave largely to the deserving poor, and dis- pensed gold by handfuls in secret benevolence, they would only be rendering back to the people a portion of that inordinate wealth which they derive from the thews, sinews, fibres, vitals, and heart’s blood of the toiling, wretched, starving millions! ‘* Any little trifling inconvenience! ’’ — and yet thousands of respectable tradesmen have been ruined by the disgrace- ful delays of their aristocratic customers and patrons in liquidating their accounts. How much misery has the - Duke of York caused in this manner? And yet a column is erected to his memory! Is it not a column of infamy? While the Prince of Wales was uttering those words, “any little trifling inconvenience,’ a wretched, broken- hearted, despairing man was returning to his home in the Kdgeware Road. Home! how often had that delightful name cheered John Foster’s spirits as he breathed it to himself while toiling at his desk in the City!) How often had the thought of that home inspired him with energy and courage to pass through the laborious routine of the day, by holding forth the delightful assurance that happy faces and a social hearth would await his return to his own abode in the evening! But now, now, as he was wending his way back to that dwelling, he felt that it could no longer be called his home. For a home means something stationary, fixed, and per- manent, not precarious and liable to be snatched away in a moment; a place of one’s own choosing, and to which there is a certainty of returning to-morrow and next day, even as one returns to it to-day; a tenement around whose walls the eye may glance with the satisfaction of knowing that everything contained within their boundary is one’s own. Whether it be a single apartment, or a lordly man- sion, it is nevertheless a home so long as the conviction lasts that no man can deprive you of it, no one thrust you forth at will, no rude hand layits gripe upon the beds, the chairs, and the tables which it contains. (C(O) GOmicdooks