The Shoemaker Who Refused Charity

Charles Lett, the brave-spirited shoemaker, who worked at his bench to the last, a consumptive laboring for his wife and two little children, furnished not only an object lesson of quiet pride and indomitable industry up to the gates of death, but the story of his life and his suffering ought to inspire others who have ever felt poverty at the door.

To attribute the praise of the loved ones that their own death is a sort of special providence; a discipline of sorrow designed by God for their purification, reformation, regeneration, etc., is little short of blasphemy. When the New Testament says that the rain falls equally upon the just and unjust, it means exactly what Sophocles hundred years before Christ makes the chorus say in Antigone: 'Death strikes with impartial hand the prince's palace and the peasant's cot,' which is a distinct assertion of the stable movement of the great laws of nature.

There is a sweeter and sounder philosophy to be taught. It is for those who are rich and whose house is full of farewells to their dying; whose eyes are full of tears for their dead, to visit the houses of the high-spirited, heroic poor, like Charles Lett, who refused charity and made shoes with his shivering hands until he could work no longer. The bereaved rich will find some healing for their sorrows in the contemplation of the suffering and sorrow of the bereaved, yet heroic, uncomplaining poor, who witness the shadow of death creeping into their homes and refuse to accept charity.