g-account can write out cheques for charitable
institutions. But to accomplish anything personal, imaginative,
adventurous, anything with a touch of distinction, is a less easy
matter. You wake up in the morning with the altruistic yearnings of a
St. Francois de Sales, and yet somehow you go to bed in the evening with
the craving unsatisfied. You have really had so few opportunities; and
when an occasion does arise it is hedged around with such difficulties
as to baffle all but the most persistent. Have you ever tried to give a
beggar a five-pound note? I did this morning.

She was a miserable, shivering, starving woman of fifty selling matches
in Sackville Street. She held out a shrivelled hand to me, and eyes that
once had been beautiful pleaded hungrily for alms.

"Here," said I to myself, "is an opportunity of bringing unimagined
gladness for a month or two into this forlorn creature's life."

I pressed a five-pound note into her hand and passed on. She ran after
me, terror on her face.

"I daren't take it, sir; they would say I had stolen it, and I should be
locked up. No one would believe a gentleman had given it to me."

She trembled, overwhelmed by the colossal fortune that might, and yet
might not, be hers. I sympathised, but not having the change in gold, I
could do no more than listen to an incoherent tale of misery, which did
not aid the solution of the problem. It was manifestly impossible to
take back the note; and yet if she retained it she would be subjected
to scandalous indignities. What was to be done? I turned my eyes
towards Piccadilly and beheld a policeman. A page wearing the name of a
milliner's shop on his cap whisked past me. I stopped him and slipped a
shilling into his hand.

"Will you ask that policeman to come to me?"

The boy tore down the street and told the policeman and followed him up
to me, eager for amusement.

"What has the woman been doing, sir?" asked the policeman.

"Nothing," said I. "I have given her a five-pound note."

"What for, sir?" he asked.

"To further my pursuit of the eumoirous," said I, whereat he gaped
stolidly; "but, be that as it may, I have given it her as a free gift,
and she is afraid to present it anywhere lest she should be charged with
theft. Will you kindly accompany her to a shop, where she can change it,
and vouch for her honesty?"

The policeman, who seemed to form the lowest opinion of my intellect,
said he didn't know a shop on his beat w