Servant-girls are lured away by old women who come in the guise
of alms-seekers, and by well-feigned poverty and a seeming spirit
of humble thankfulness--often of pious trust in God--win upon their
sympathy and confidence. Many a poor weak girl has thus been led to
visit one of these poor women in the hope of doing her some good,
and many a one has thus been drawn into evil ways. If the people only
understood this matter as I understand it, they would shut hearts and
hands against all beggars. I add beggary as a vice to drinking and
policy-buying as the next most active agency in the work of making
paupers and criminals."

"But there are deserving poor," said Dinneford. "We cannot shut our
hearts against all who seek for help."

"The deserving poor," replied Mr. Paulding, "are never common
beggars--never those who solicit in the street or importune from house
to house. They try always to help themselves, and ask for aid only when
in great extremity. They rarely force themselves on your attention; they
suffer and die often in dumb despair. We find them in these dreary and
desolate cellars and garrets, sick and starving and silent, often dying,
and minister to them as best we can. If the money given daily to idle
and vicious beggars could be gathered into a fund and dispensed with a
wise Christian charity, it would do a vast amount of good; now it does
only evil."

"You are doubtless right in this," returned Mr. Dinneford. "Some one has
said that to help the evil is to hurt the good, and I guess his saying
is near the truth."

"If you help the vicious and the idle," was answered, "you simply
encourage vice and idleness, and these never exist without doing a hurt
to society. Withhold aid, and they will be forced to work, and so not
only do something for the common good, but be kept out of the evil ways
into which idleness always leads.

"So you see, sir, how wrong it is to give alms to the vast crew of
beggars that infest our cities, and especially to the children who are
sent out daily to beg or steal as opportunity offers.

"But there is another view of the case," continued Mr. Paulding, "that
few consider, and which would, I am sure, arouse the people to immediate
action if they understood it as I do. We compare the nation to a great
man. We call it a 'body politic.' We speak of its head, its brain, its
hands, its feet, its arteries and vital forces. We know that no part
of the nation can be hurt without all the