ore a House of Commons'
Committee--was _this_, or was his truly paternal consideration, which
(if a fact) deserved a statue rather than a whipping-post, and is
inconsistent at least with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies which
he has been slandered with--a reason that he should be deprived of his
chosen, harmless, nay edifying, way of life, and be committed in hoary
age for a sturdy vagabond?--

There was a Yorick once, whom it would not have shamed to have sate
down at the cripples' feast, and to have thrown in his benediction,
ay, and his mite too, for a companionable symbol. "Age, thou hast lost
thy breed."--

Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made by begging
are (I verily believe) misers' calumnies. One was much talked of in
the public papers some time since, and the usual charitable inferences
deduced. A clerk in the Bank was surprised with the announcement of
a five hundred pound legacy left him by a person whose name he was a
stranger to. It seems that in his daily morning walks from Peckham
(or some village thereabouts) where he lived, to his office, it had
been his practice for the last twenty years to drop his half-penny
duly into the hat of some blind Bartimeus, that sate begging alms
by the way-side in the Borough. The good old beggar recognised his
daily benefactor by the voice only; and, when he died, left all the
amassings of his alms (that had been half a century perhaps in the
accumulating) to his old Bank friend. Was this a story to purse up
people's hearts, and pennies, against giving an alms to the blind?--or
not rather a beautiful moral of well-directed charity on the one part,
and noble gratitude upon the other?

I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk.

I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of creature, blinking, and
looking up with his no eyes in the sun--Is it possible I could have
steeled my purse against him?

Perhaps I had no small change.

Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, imposition,
imposture--_give, and ask no questions_. Cast thy bread upon the
waters. Some have unawares (like this Bank clerk) entertained angels.

Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress. Act a
charity sometimes. When a poor creature (outwardly and visibly such)
comes before thee, do not stay to inquire whether the "seven small
children," in whose name he implores thy assistance, have a veritable
existence. Rake not into the bowels of unwelcome truth