y credit for the past six months: my giving up my seat
inside a tramcar, late one wet night, to a dismal-looking old woman, who
had not had even the politeness to say "thank you," she seemed just half
asleep. According to this idiot, all the time and money I had spent
responding to these charitable appeals had been wasted.

I was not angry with him, at first. I was willing to regard what he had
done as merely a clerical error.

"You have got the items down all right," I said (I spoke quite friendly),
"but you have made a slight mistake--we all do now and again; you have
put them down on the wrong side of the book. I only hope this sort of
thing doesn't occur often."

What irritated me as much as anything was the grave, passionless face the
Angel turned upon me.

"There is no mistake," he answered.

"No mistake!" I cried. "Why, you blundering--"

He closed the book with a weary sigh.

I felt so mad with him, I went to snatch it out of his hand. He did not
do anything that I was aware of, but at once I began falling. The faint
luminosity beneath me grew, and then the lights of London seemed shooting
up to meet me. I was coming down on the clock tower at Westminster. I
gave myself a convulsive twist, hoping to escape it, and fell into the
river.

And then I awoke.

But it stays with me: the weary sadness of the Angel's face. I cannot
shake remembrance from me. Would I have done better, had I taken the
money I had spent upon these fooleries, gone down with it among the poor
myself, asking nothing in return. Is this fraction of our superfluity,
flung without further thought or care into the collection box, likely to
satisfy the Impracticable Idealist, who actually suggested--one shrugs
one's shoulders when one thinks of it--that one should sell all one had
and give to the poor?

The Author is troubled concerning his Investments.

Or is our charity but a salve to conscience--an insurance, at decidedly
moderate premium, in case, after all, there should happen to be another
world? Is Charity lending to the Lord something we can so easily do
without?

I remember a lady tidying up her house, clearing it of rubbish. She
called it "Giving to the Fresh Air Fund." Into the heap of lumber one of
her daughters flung a pair of crutches that for years had been knocking
about the house. The lady picked them out again.

"We won't give those away," she said, "they might come in useful again.
One never k