luxuries for the sake
of others.

Outside of the really poor, is there such a thing as genuine charity
among us? The church certainly does not demand anything approximating
self-sacrifice. A few dollars will suffice for any appeal. I am not a
professing Christian, but the church regards me tolerantly and takes my
money when it can get it. But how little it gets! I give
frequently--almost constantly--but in most instances my giving is less
an act of benevolence than the payment of a tax upon my social standing.
I am compelled to give. If I could not be relied upon to take tickets to
charity entertainments and to add my name to the subscription lists for
hospitals and relief funds I should lose my caste. One cannot be _too_
cold a proposition. I give to these things grudgingly and because I
cannot avoid it.

Of course the aggregate amount thus disposed of is really not large and
I never feel the loss of it. Frankly, people of my class rarely
inconvenience themselves for the sake of anybody, whether their own
immediate friends or the sick, suffering and sorrowful. It is trite to
say that the clerk earning one thousand dollars deprives himself of more
in giving away fifty than the man with an income of twenty thousand
dollars in giving away five thousand. It really costs the clerk more to
go down into his pocket for that sum than the rich man to draw his check
for those thousands.

Where there is necessity for generous and immediate relief I
occasionally, but very rarely, contribute two hundred and fifty or five
hundred dollars. My donation is always known and usually is noticed with
others of like amount in the daily papers. I am glad to give the money
and I have a sensation of making a substantial sacrifice in doing so.
Obviously, however, it has cost me really nothing! I spend two hundred
and fifty dollars or more every week or so on an evening's entertainment
for fifteen or twenty of my friends and think nothing of it. It is part
of my manner of living, and my manner of living is an advertisement of
my success--and advertising in various subtle ways is a business
necessity. Yet if I give two hundred and fifty dollars to a relief fund
I have an inflation of the heart and feel conscious of my generosity.

I can frankly say, therefore, that so far as I am concerned my response
to the ordinary appeal for charity is purely perfunctory and largely, if
not entirely, dictated by policy; and the sum total of my charities on