rning last spring," I began, "I received in my morning mail a
letter, the delicate penmanship of which at once attracted my
attention and awakened my curiosity. Turning to the signature, I read
the name of a young lady friend of mine, and somewhat startled at the
thought that this was the first time I had ever seen the handwriting
of one I knew so well, I perused the letter with an interest that
presently became painful as I realized the tenor of its contents. I
will not quote the letter, though I could, but confine myself to
saying that after a modest recognition of my friendship for her--quite
a fatherly friendship, I assure you, as she is only eighteen, and I,
as you know, am well on towards fifty--she proceeded to ask in a
humble and confiding spirit for the loan--do not start--of fifty
dollars. Such a request coming from a young girl well connected and
with every visible sign of being generously provided for by her
father, was certainly startling to an old bachelor of settled ways and
strict notions, but remembering her youth and the childish innocence
of her manner, I turned over the page and read as her reason for
proffering such a request, that her heart was set upon aiding a
certain poor family that stood in immediate need of food, clothes, and
medicines, but that she could not do what she wished, because she had
already spent all the money allowed her by her father for such
purposes and dared not go to him for more, as she had once before
offended him by doing this, and feared if she repeated her fault he
would carry out the threat he had then made of stopping her allowance
altogether. But the family was a deserving one and she could not see
any member of it starve, so she came to me, of whose goodness she was
assured, convinced I would understand her perplexity and excuse her,
and so forth and so forth, in language quite child-like and
entreating, which, if it did not satisfy my ideas of propriety, at
least touched my heart and made any action which I could take in the
matter extremely difficult.

"To refuse her request would be at once to mortify and aggrieve her;
to accede to it and give her the fifty dollars she asked--a sum by the
way I could not well spare--would be to encourage an action easily
pardoned once, but which if repeated would lead to unpleasant
complications, to say the least. The third course, of informing her
father of what she needed, I did not even consider, for I knew him
well enough to