Winter...

Winter for the poets is one thing; for the ordinary man, another!

The falling drops of rain, the dreadful storms of night, the sting of cold piercing into living flesh, the warm fireside — all these the poet sees otherwise than ordinary people see them... and the poet yearns for them otherwise than the rest of mankind yearns.

And winter for the rich man, marching in the procession of grandeur, amid the world's pageantry, is another thing than it is for this poor wretch walking in his own funeral toward the grave, amid the world's meanness and paltriness.

Here are people delighting in life, in the richest of what life bestows — warmth, comfort, and health.

And here are herds of human animals living in the frost, in the cold, their flesh cracking, their blood drying, hunger sucking at their bodies...

Here are children to whom life has brought riches from this side and that; plenty pours into their rooms, and they trample plenty underfoot.

And here are children — God forgive me — rats living in rotten dens, who have never tasted the sweetness of childhood, naked as little sucked-dry cats, living on the dirt...

And winter — this winter, and every winter — for the sheltered lady who lives in luxury, is another thing than it is for the working woman and the hired woman, who gathers her own morsel and her children's morsel from the streets, in the sweat of her brow, the blood of her heart, and the wounds of her soul.

In this winter... may we ask of the men and women of means, of those who live amid luxury and plenty, that they satisfy a hungry man's hunger, that they clothe a naked man's nakedness, that they gather in an orphan from the roadside,

that they comfort one who is sick and broken —

so that their consciences may be warmed, and money may take on a noble meaning in their coffers.