PHILANTHROPY. 
73 
the support of some poor family in the town; and if 1 
had nothing to do, — for the devil finds employment for 
the idle, — I might try my hand at some such pastime as 
that. However, when I have thought to indulge myself 
in this respect, and lay their Heaven under an obliga¬ 
tion by maintaining certain poor persons in all respects 
as comfortably as I maintain myself, and have even 
ventured so far as to make them the offer, they have 
one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor. 
While my townsmen and women are devoted in so many 
ways to the good of their fellows, I trust that one at least 
may be spared to other and less humane pursuits. You 
must have a genius for charity as well as for any thing 
else. As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions 
which are full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, 
strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not 
agree with my constitution. Probably I should not con¬ 
sciously and deliberately forsake my particular calling 
to do the good which society demands of me, to save the 
universe from annihilation; and I believe that a like but 
infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that now 
preserves it. But I would not stand between any man 
and his genius; and to him who does this work, which 
I decline, with his whole heart and soul and life, I would 
say, Persevere, even if the world call it doing evil, as it 
is most likely they will. 
I am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar 
one; no doubt many of my readers would make a sim¬ 
ilar defence. At doing something, — I will not engage 
that my neighbors shall pronounce it good, — I do not 
hesitate to say that I should be a capital fellow to hire; 
but what that is, it is for my employer to find out. 
What good I do, in the common sense of that word, must 
