ad barely enough to give to the last comers. The men's
hands stretched out long before they reached them. Some said "Thank
you"; many said "God bless you"; some said nothing at all.

"There's more money in that crowd than there is in this now," said
Perner, as they turned away.

"That's so," said Livingstone. "But wait till a year from to-night.
We'll come down here and give these poor devils a dollar apiece--maybe
ten of them."

Livingstone's face had grown tender again. In fancy he saw them
returning a year from to-night with ample charity. And another would
come with them--one who would make the charity sweeter because of
bestowing it with fair hands.

III

A LETTER FROM THE "DEAREST GIRL IN THE WORLD," OTHERWISE MISS DOROTHY
CASTLE OF CLEVELAND, TO MR. TRUMAN LIVINGSTONE OF NEW YORK

"MY DEAR OLD TRUE: I have both laughed and cried over your
letter, and I have thought, too, a great deal. It was
awfully jolly to think of you and those good friends of
yours dining together on New Year's eve, and there is only
one way I would have had it different, and that way would
have seemed selfish on my part, and unfair to the others,
too.

"I do wish I might have been near by, though, unknown to
you, and heard all that passed, for I know you only told me
the good things the others said, and not all the best
things--those you said yourself. Or, if you did not say
them, you thought them, and were only restrained by modesty.

"I suppose you will get over that by and by, when you are as
old as Perny and Barry and Van (you see, I am beginning to
feel that I know your friends, and call them as you do);
only I hope you won't get entirely over it, either, for do
you know, True, that is just one reason why I love you--I
mean because you are fine and manly and modest--just old
True, that's all. And when I came to where you gave the
money to the shivering men waiting for bread, I knew just
how you felt, and I couldn't keep back the tears to save my
life.

"And I know it was you, True, who proposed it, though you
didn't say so, for it is exactly what you _would_ do; and
when you told how they put out their hands for the money,
and some of them said 'God bless you,' and how we would go
there together in a year, and with Perny and Van, too, and
give them all something again, and perh