but, like soap, it is an agreeable thing.
And it does not sum up all mortal merits to be a sportsman playing the
game in a world where it is so often necessary to be a workman doing the
work. By all means let a gentleman congratulate himself that he has
not lost his natural love of pleasure, as against the blase, and
unchildlike. But when one has the childlike joy it is best to have also
the childlike unconsciousness; and I do not think we should have special
affection for the little boy who ever lastingly explained that it was
his duty to play Hide and Seek and one of his family virtues to be
prominent in Puss in the Corner.

Another such irritating hypocrisy is the oligarchic attitude towards
mendicity as against organized charity. Here again, as in the case of
cleanliness and of athletics, the attitude would be perfectly human and
intelligible if it were not maintained as a merit. Just as the obvious
thing about soap is that it is a convenience, so the obvious thing about
beggars is that they are an inconvenience. The rich would deserve very
little blame if they simply said that they never dealt directly with
beggars, because in modern urban civilization it is impossible to deal
directly with beggars; or if not impossible, at least very difficult.
But these people do not refuse money to beggars on the ground that such
charity is difficult. They refuse it on the grossly hypocritical ground
that such charity is easy. They say, with the most grotesque gravity,
"Anyone can put his hand in his pocket and give a poor man a penny; but
we, philanthropists, go home and brood and travail over the poor man's
troubles until we have discovered exactly what jail, reformatory,
workhouse, or lunatic asylum it will really be best for him to go to."
This is all sheer lying. They do not brood about the man when they get
home, and if they did it would not alter the original fact that their
motive for discouraging beggars is the perfectly rational one that
beggars are a bother. A man may easily be forgiven for not doing this
or that incidental act of charity, especially when the question is as
genuinely difficult as is the case of mendicity. But there is something
quite pestilently Pecksniffian about shrinking from a hard task on the
plea that it is not hard enough. If any man will really try talking to
the ten beggars who come to his door he will soon find out whether it is
really so much easier than the labor of writing a check for a h