ght. But your scheme; how did you come to hit upon that?"

"I was going to tell you. After seeing my invention duly catalogued and
placed, I gave myself up to pondering the scene about me. As I dwelt
upon that shining pageant of arts, and moving concourse of nations, and
reflected that here was the pride of the world glorying in a glass
house, a sense of the fragility of worldly grandeur profoundly impressed
me. And I said to myself, I will see if this occasion of vanity cannot
supply a hint toward a better profit than was designed. Let some
world-wide good to the world-wide cause be now done. In short, inspired
by the scene, on the fourth day I issued at the World's Fair my
prospectus of the World's Charity."

"Quite a thought. But, pray explain it."

"The World's Charity is to be a society whose members shall comprise
deputies from every charity and mission extant; the one object of the
society to be the methodization of the world's benevolence; to which
end, the present system of voluntary and promiscuous contribution to be
done away, and the Society to be empowered by the various governments to
levy, annually, one grand benevolence tax upon all mankind; as in
Augustus Caesar's time, the whole world to come up to be taxed; a tax
which, for the scheme of it, should be something like the income-tax in
England, a tax, also, as before hinted, to be a consolidation-tax of all
possible benevolence taxes; as in America here, the state-tax, and the
county-tax, and the town-tax, and the poll-tax, are by the assessors
rolled into one. This tax, according to my tables, calculated with care,
would result in the yearly raising of a fund little short of eight
hundred millions; this fund to be annually applied to such objects, and
in such modes, as the various charities and missions, in general
congress represented, might decree; whereby, in fourteen years, as I
estimate, there would have been devoted to good works the sum of eleven
thousand two hundred millions; which would warrant the dissolution of
the society, as that fund judiciously expended, not a pauper or heathen
could remain the round world over."

"Eleven thousand two hundred millions! And all by passing round a _hat_,
as it were."

"Yes, I am no Fourier, the projector of an impossible scheme, but a
philanthropist and a financier setting forth a philanthropy and a
finance which are practicable."

"Practicable?"

"Yes. Eleven thousand two hundred millions; it will