nd the
law to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on the
ears of those who, for their part, did not care how they were done by,
who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and came very near freely
forgiving them all they did.

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your
example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself
with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. We make curious mistakes
sometimes. Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he is
dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his
misfortune. If you give him money, he will perhaps buy more rags with
it. I was wont to pity the clumsy Irish laborers who cut ice on the
pond, in such mean and ragged clothes, while I shivered in my more tidy
and somewhat more fashionable garments, till, one bitter cold day, one
who had slipped into the water came to my house to warm him, and I saw
him strip off three pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings ere he got
down to the skin, though they were dirty and ragged enough, it is true,
and that he could afford to refuse the extra garments which I offered
him, he had so many intra ones. This ducking was the very thing he
needed. Then I began to pity myself, and I saw that it would be a
greater charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a whole slop-shop
on him. There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who
is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest
amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of
life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve. It is
the pious slave-breeder devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to
buy a Sunday's liberty for the rest. Some show their kindness to the
poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if
they employed themselves there? You boast of spending a tenth part of
your income in charity; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and
done with it. Society recovers only a tenth part of the property then.
Is this owing to the generosity of him in whose possession it is found,
or to the remissness of the officers of justice?

Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated
by mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated; and it is our selfishness
which overrates it. A robust poor man, one sunny day here in Concord,
praised a fellow-townsman to me, because, as he s