Nothing seemed meaner to him than to profess a sham.

But it began in a cloudy way to appear to him that there is a manner of arranging one's houses that makes it difficult--yes, well-nigh impossible--to act out in them any of the brotherhood principles of those discourses.
There are houses where the self-respecting poor, or the honest laboring man and woman, cannot be made to enter or to feel at home.
They are made for the selfish luxury of the privileged few.

Then John reflected, uneasily, that this change in his house had absorbed that whole balance which usually remained on his accounts to be devoted to benevolent purposes, and with which this year he had proposed to erect a reading-room for his work-people.
"Lillie," said John, as he walked uneasily up and down, "I wish you would try to help me in this thing.

I always have done it,--my father and mother did it before me,--and I don't want all of a sudden to depart from it.

It may seem a little thing, but it does a great deal of good.