ABSTRACT
How much more pitiful Mr Gissing has grown ofthe human beings he creates for us! He still shows them to us in hard, or sordid,- or hopeless plights, and he reveals more and more his disbelief in hardship as a blessed influence. Poverty is mostly ugly, and to sensitive souls generally demoralising. But sometimes, of late, he goes further and shows he cannot bear the thought of help being withheld in so much curable human misfortune, and his hand is stretched out in rescue. The hopeless, harmless wretch in 'An Inspiration', gets vitality and an awakening to an old romance and a new future by a dinner. Mr Mayhew, the hero of 'In Honour Bound', is saved from paying the uttermost farthing ofa debt that would have dragged him down. The poor, tired woman of 'A Day of Silence' dies before the bodies of her husband and child are brought home. There are other lighter, more amusing stories. But such as tell ofthe struggle with fate, ofthe shadow of poverty and of unsympathetic presences, are the stronger and give
