when it was hardest? Better still if she be wife
and mother herself and can enter into the responsibilities of a head of
a household, understands her joys and cares, knows what heroic patience
it needs to keep gentle when the nerves are unhinged and the children
noisy. Depend upon it if we thought of the poor primarily as husbands,
wives, sons, daughters, members of households as we are ourselves,
instead of contemplating them as a different class, we should recognize
better how the home training and the high ideal of home duty was our
best preparation for work among them."

+The third principle is: Give the man you help no more and no less than
he needs to make his life what you and he together see that it is good
for it to be.+--This principle shows how much to give. Will ten cents
serve as an excuse for idleness? Will five cents be spent in drink? Will
one cent relax his determination to earn an honest living for himself
and family? Then these sums are too much, and should be withheld. On the
other hand, can the man be made hopeful, resolute, determined to
overcome the difficulties of a trying situation? Can you impart to him
your own strong will, your steadfast courage, your high ideal? is he
ready to work, and willing to make any sacrifice that is necessary to
regain the power of self-support? Then you will not count any sum that
you can afford to give too great; even if it be necessary to carry him
and his family right through a winter by sheer force of giving outright
everything they need.

It is not the amount of the gift, but the spirit in which it is received
that makes it good or bad for the recipient. If received by a man who
clings to all the weakness and wickedness that brought his poverty upon
him, then your gift, whether small or large, does no good and much harm.
If with the gift the man welcomes your counsel, follows your advice,
adopts your ideal, and becomes partaker in your determination that he
shall become as industrious, and prudent, and courageous as a man in his
situation can be, then whether you give him little or much material
assistance, every cent of it goes to the highest work in which wealth
can be employed--the making a man more manlike.

THE REWARD.

+Our attitude toward the poor and unfortunate is the test of our
attitude toward humanity.+--For the poor and unfortunate present
humanity to us in the condition which most strongly appeals to our
fellow-feeling. The way in which I tr