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They
unbend. Only inveterate folks do not unbend. They dare not, because
they have no backbone. They know that if they once unbent, they could
not straighten themselves out again. They make a virtue of their own
organic defect. They explain their natural imperfection by calling
themselves pure. If you had a little money--"
"You are always harking back to that point. What has money to do with
it?"
"Poverty is like rain. It drops down ceaselessly, disintegrating the
finer tissues of a man, his recent, delicate adjustments, and leaving
nothing but the bleak and gaunt framework. A poor man is a wintry
tree--alive, but stripped of its shining splendour. He is always denying
himself this or that. One by one, his humane instincts, his elegant
desires, are starved away by stress of circumstances. The charming
diversity of life ceases to have any meaning for him. To console
himself, he sets up perverse canons of right and wrong. What the rich
do, that is wrong. Why? Because he does not do it. Why not? Because he
has no money.


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