Love One To Another
I was struck by the story of Mrs. Pardiggle’s “charity” in chapter 8 of Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Mrs. Pardiggle was a woman who insisted on dragging her five children around with her into the homes of the poor to “help” them. The children were miserable and were forced to give any money that they received to different charitable organizations (that the other then boasted of). Two young women and main characters in the book, Esther and Ada, were asked to go along with her for one particular visit to a poor bricklayer and his family who lived in despicable conditions. The man made it clear that Mrs. Pardiggle was not welcome there, but she was undeterred in her efforts to fix their situation. Esther described the scene this way, “Mrs. Pardiggle, who had been regarding him through her spectacles with a forcible composure, calculated, I could not help thinking, to increase his antagonism, pulled out a good book as if it were a constable’s staff and took the whole family into custod...