reports to be nearly convinced that public work
should be public duty, and that great benefactions do harm as well as
good.

And even supposing it spent on these objects, how could it do more than
increase and perpetuate that same kind of human nature which was her
great grievance? Her New York friends could not meet this question
except by falling back upon their native commonplaces, which she
recklessly trampled upon, averring that, much as she admired the genius
of the famous traveller, Mr. Gulliver, she never had been able, since
she became a widow, to accept the Brobdingnagian doctrine that he who
made two blades of grass grow where only one grew before deserved better
of mankind than the whole race of politicians. She would not find fault
with the philosopher had he required that the grass should be of an
improved quality; "but," said she, "I cannot honestly pretend that I
should be pleased to see two New York men where I now see one; the idea
is too ridiculous; more than one and a half would be fatal to me."

Then came her Boston friends, who suggested that higher education was
precisely what she wanted; she should throw herself into a crusade for
universities and art-schools. Mrs. Lee turned upon them with a sweet
smile; "Do you know," said she, "that we have in New York already the
richest university in America, and that its only trouble has always been
that it can get no scholars even by paying for them? Do you want me to
go out into the streets and waylay boys? If the heathen refuse to be
converted, can you give me power over the stake and the sword to compel
them to come in? And suppose you can? Suppose I march all the boys in
Fifth Avenue down to the university and have them all properly taught
Greek and Latin, English literature, ethics, and German philosophy.
What then? You do it in Boston. Now tell me honestly what comes of it. I
suppose you have there a brilliant society; numbers of poets, scholars,
philosophers, statesmen, all up and down Beacon Street. Your evenings
must be sparkling. Your press must scintillate. How is it that we New
Yorkers never hear of it? We don't go much into your society; but when
we do, it doesn't seem so very much better than our own. You are just
like the rest of us. You grow six inches high, and then you stop. Why
will not somebody grow to be a tree and cast a shadow?"

The average member of New York society, although not unused to this
contemptuous kind of treatment fro