ic welfare more efficacious by giving the whole to one
institution instead of dividing it among twenty.

However, human nature is the same everywhere, and until the crack of
doom sounds mankind will be found undertaking more charity than it can
carry through successfully, not only in Dumfries Corners, but everywhere
else. It would be difficult to fix the responsibility for this state of
affairs, although the large generosity of those who lend their names and
blockade their pockets may consider itself a candidate for chief honors
in this somewhat vital matter. It may be, too, that the large generosity
of people who really are largely generous with their thousands has
something to do with it. There is more than one ten-thousand-dollar town
in existence which has accepted a hundred-thousand-dollar hospital from
generously disposed citizens, and the other citizens thereof have
properly hailed their benefactor's name with loud acclaim, but the
hundred-thousand-dollar hospital, which might have been a
fifty-thousand-dollar hospital, with an endowment of fifty thousand more
to make it self-supporting, has a tendency to ruin other charities quite
as worthy, because its maintenance pumps dry the pockets of those who
have to give. It will require a drastic course of training, I fear, to
open the eyes of the public to the fact that even generosity can be
overdone, and I must disclaim any desire to superintend the process of
securing their awakening, for it is an ungrateful task to criticise even
a mistakenly generous person; and man being by nature prone to
thoughtless judgments, the critic of a philanthropist who spends a
million of dollars to provide tortoise-shell combs for bald beggars
would shortly find himself in hot water. Therefore let us discuss not
the causes, but some of the results of the system which has placed upon
suburban shoulders such seemingly hopeless philanthropic burdens. At
Dumfries Corners the book sales of Mr. Peters, one of the vestrymen,
were one of these results.

There were two of these sales. The first, like all book sales for
charity, consisted largely of the vending of ice-cream and cake. The
second was different; but I shall not deal with that until I have
described the first.

This had been given at Mr. Peters's house, with the cheerful consent of
Mrs. Peters. The object was to raise seventy-five dollars, the sum
needed to repair the roof of Mr. Peters's church. In ordinary times the
congregati