728 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



But, indeed, this is the lowest aspect of such a question, and 

 I freely admit it. The title of this paper points to that gravest 

 aspect of it, with which I am now concerned. The largest mis- 

 chief of indiscriminate almsgiving is not its wanton waste — it is 

 its inevitable and invariable degradation of its objects. I have 

 spoken of the grave antagonism of the Church to wisely organized 

 charity, but it is but the echo of the hostility of the individual, and 

 often of the best and wdsest men and women. Elsewhere (but not, 

 I think, in print) I have related an incident in this connection of 

 which one is almost tempted to say ex uno disce omnes. Approach- 

 ing one day, when I was a pastor in a great city, the door of one 

 of my clerical brethren, I observed a w^oman leaving it who, though 

 she hastily turned her back upon me, I recognized as a member of 

 my own congregation. On entering my friend's study I said to 

 him: 



" I beg your pardon, but was not that Mrs. whom I saw 



leaving your door a moment ago? " 



" Yes." 



"What w^as she after, may I ask? " 



My friend — now, alas! no longer living — was a man distin- 

 guished by singular delicacy and chivalry of character and bear- 

 ing, and he turned upon me witli some surprise and hauteur and 

 said: 



" AVell, yes, you may ask; but I do not know that, in the matter 

 of the sad and painful circumstances of one of my own parishioners, 

 I am called upon to answer." 



"Precisely," I replied; "but, as it happens, she isn't your pa- 

 rishioner." 



"What do you mean, sir?" he exclaimed, wdth some heat. 

 " Do you suppose that I don't know the members of my own flock? " 



" On the contrary," I said, " I have no doubt that you know 

 not only them but the members of a great many other flocks, as 

 in the instance of the person who has just left your door, who, as 

 it happens, has been a member of the church of which I am rector 

 for some fifteen years." 



The remark and the abundant evidcnco witli wlii('li T was able 

 to re-enforce it at last persuaded my friend to institute further in- 

 quiries, which resulted in the discovery that the subject of those 

 inquiries maintained similar relations with some seven parishes, 

 from every one of which she was receiving, as a poor widow, a 

 monthly allowance! And yet my reverend brother was one of 

 the most strenuous opponents of any system or society, any chal- 

 lenge or interrogation which, as he said, canio between him and 

 his poor. Alas! though in one sense they were his poor, in another 



