She earned six shillings a
week, and upon it supported a bed-ridden mother and three younger
children. She was housewife, nurse, mother, breadwinner, rolled
into one. Yes, there are heroines OUT of fiction.
So loutish Tom has won the Victoria Cross--dashed out under a storm
of bullets and rescued the riddled flag. Who would have thought it
of loutish Tom? The village alehouse one always deemed the goal of
his endeavours. Chance comes to Tom and we find him out. To Harry
the Fates were less kind. A ne'er-do-well was Harry--drank, knocked
his wife about, they say. Bury him, we are well rid of him, he was
good for nothing. Are we sure?
Let us acknowledge we are sinners. We know, those of us who dare to
examine ourselves, that we are capable of every meanness, of every
wrong under the sun. It is by the accident of circumstance, aided
by the helpful watchfulness of the policeman, that our possibilities
of crime are known only to ourselves. But having acknowledged our
evil, let us also acknowledge that we are capable of greatness. The
martyrs who faced death and torture unflinchingly for conscience'
sake, were men and women like ourselves. They had their wrong side.
Before the small trials of daily life they no doubt fell as we fall.
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