DARK PROBLEMS 175

and the women in travail are all indoors; they
are not for show, and you need eyes that can
penetrate brick walls to realize their existence.
And as for the vices of mankind, was it not said
of old that " men love darkness rather than light
because their deeds are evil " ?

Can the same be said of the finer aspects of
civilization ? Not with the same emphasis, not
with so few reservations. Health is less hidden
than sickness, virtue than vice, beauty than
ugliness. Many noble deeds done by the right
hand are, indeed, carefully hidden from the left
but, on the whole, " men do not hide their light
under a bushel; " and it is well they do not.
Whether one is walking among palaces or slums
one may repeat, with comfort to oneself, the
familiar lines of Gray:

" Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomd caves of ocean bear,
Full many a flower is born to blush unseeny
And waste its sweetness on the desert air"

But what hides these lovely children of the
light is rather circumstance than modesty. If you
came to look at them they would not seek to run
away and hide themselves in holes. But misery
would; so would despair; so would vice. In
their extremest forms these things call on the
rocks to hide them and the hills to cover them.
Death also is secretive. If the dying of men were