730 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the aged, and especially for that most deserving class of gentle- 

 women who, having been reared in affluence, come to old age, 

 after having struggled to maintain themselves by teaching, needle- 

 work, and the like, with broken powers and empty purses., But 

 it has, I am informed, been often impossible to find places for 

 them in institutions especially created for their care, because its 

 lady managers have filled their places with their own worn-out 

 servants, who, having spent their years and strength in their em- 

 ployer's service, are turned over in their old age, with a shrewd 

 frugality which one can not but admire, to be maintained at the 

 cost of other people. It is impossible to confront such instances, 

 and they might be multiplied indefinitely, without recognizing how 

 enormous are the possibilities of mischief even in connection with 

 the most useful institutional charity. 



And yet these are not so great as those which no less surely 

 follow, as it is oftenest administered, in the train of individual 

 beneficence. In an unwritten address, not long ago, I mentioned 

 an illustration of this which I have been asked to repeat here. 

 While a rector in a large city parish, I was called upon by a stranger 

 who asked for money, and who, as evidence of his claims upon my 

 consideration, produced a letter from my father, written some 

 twenty-five years before, when he was Bishop of Pennsylvania. 

 The writer had, when this letter was placed in my hands, been 

 dead for some twenty years, but, in a community in which he had 

 been greatly loved and respected, his words had not, even in that 

 lapse of time, lost their power. The letter was a general letter, 

 addressed to no one, and therein lay its mischief. When read, it 

 had in each instance been returned to its bearer, and he soon dis- 

 covered that he had in it a talisman that would open almost any 

 pocket. He was originally a mechanic who had been temporarily 

 disabled by a fit of sickness; when I saw him, however, he was ob- 

 viously, and doubtless for years had been, in robust health. But 

 he had discovered that if he were willing to beg he need not work, 

 and he had long before made his choice on the side of ease and in- 

 dolence. After reading the letter which he produced, and looking 

 at its date and soiled condition, both revealing the long service 

 that it had performed, I said to him, "No, I will not give you 

 anything, but I will pay you ten dollars if you will let me have 

 that letter." It would not be easy to describe the leer of cunning 

 and contempt with which he promptly took it out of my hand, 

 folded it, placed it in his pocketbook, and left the room. He was 

 not so innocent as to surrender his whole capital in trade! 



Now, here was a man to whom a well-meaning but inconsider- 

 ate act of kindness had been the cause of permanent degradation. 



