Rags! A bed of straw; a crust of bread; the shattered roof; the naked floor; a deal table; a broken chair! A writer whose boyhood saw the terror, and want, and despair of the last decade of the Napoleonic War, puts into the mouth of the victim of poverty this terrible wail: "But why do I talk of death?
That phantom of grizzly bone; I hardly fear his terrible shape It seems so like my own; It seems so like my own, Because of the fasts I keep; Oh God, that bread should be so dear And flesh and blood so cheap!" To the philanthropist or the benevolent sympathiser like Lord Selkirk, who aims at benefiting suffering humanity, it is not the trouble, the self-sacrifice, or the spending of money in relief that is the worry, but it is the bitterness, the suspicion, the unworkableness, and the selfishness of the poverty-stricken themselves that disturbs and distresses the benefactor's heart.

It is often too the heartlessness and prejudice of those who oppose the benefactor's plans that causes the generous man anxiety and even at times despair.

Poverty in its worst form is a gaunt and ravenous beast, that bites the hand of friend or foe that is stretched out toward it.

So Lord Selkirk found it, when he undertook to help the poverty-stricken Celts of the Scottish Highlands and of the West of Ireland.

He had the sympathising heart; he had the true vision; and he had as few others of his time had, the power to plan, the invention to suggest, and the skill and pluck to overcome difficulties, but the carrying out of his intent brought him infinite trouble and sorrow.