dissolute, wanton, reckless rabble, ignorant of their religion, you will find many of them among those people. Poor and at the same time most unhappy mortals! I do not wish to injure or to stop the flow of Christian charity, for every alms given for God’s sake, no matter who the recipient is, deserves its reward. But I do believe that the best alms for such people, and the most useful for their souls, would be to give them every time they come for charity a gentle but earnest exhortation to avoid idleness, which can never do them any good; for those idlers only steal the bread out of the mouths of other poor people who are really infirm and cannot work, and are a source of loss to the decent poor who have to work hard to feed their children, and yet suffer hunger and hardship. The best alms and those most pleasing to God are given by those ladies and gentlemen who cause poor orphans or vagabond children to be taught some respectable trade, or instruct them in reading, writing, arithmetic, and give them habits of study. In this way those charitable people not only feed the bodies of the poor, but also frequently gain their immortal souls for heaven, by saving them from idleness, and consequently from a vicious life.
And tradesmen and peasants when they have no work.
Let us go in thought into the houses of peasants, into the workshops of tradesmen, to servant men and maids, and laborers, and see what mischief is done them by idleness. What! you exclaim, do you look for idleness among such people? They are never idle. From early morning till late at night they have to work constantly. The peasant labors in the field; the smith at the anvil with his hammer; the shoemaker stitches away with his awl and thread; the joiner and carpenter work at their bench and lathe, and so on for every trade; they are all busy the whole day. Servant men and maids are never left at rest by their masters and mistresses, and so they are not idle. Your objection is indeed not a bad one; what you say is quite true; all these people work hard from one end of the week to the other. But tell me this: if those people ever commit grievous sin by drunkenness, calumny, and detraction, quarreling and fighting, unchaste conversation, impure actions, and dangerous friendships, when do they commit such sins? Is it on week-days, when they are busy with their work? Not at all; they have no time then to think of such things. Now and then an impatient word, a curse uttered unconsciously when the work does not run smoothly—those are almost all the sins they commit then; otherwise one might say