In vain her friend remonstrated against such a breach of trust. The old lady opened the epistle, and read the following instructive words:—
“Dear Sir: Keep the old woman three weeks, and send her back.”
XVI.
GENEROSITY AND MEANNESS.
| “Life’s better joys spring up thus by the wayside, And the world calls them trifles. ’Tis not so. Heaven is not prodigal, nor pours its joys In unregarded torrents upon man: They fall, as fall the riches of the clouds Upon the parched earth, gently, drop by drop. Nothing is trifling which love consecrates.”—Aylmere. “The art of our necessities is strange.”—King Lear. |
THE WORLD UNMASKED.—A ROUGH DIAMOND.—DECAYED GENTILITY.—“THREE FLIGHT, BACK.”—SEVERAL ANECDOTES.—THE OLD FOX-HUNTER.—“STAND ON YOUR HEAD.”—KINDNESS TO CLERGYMEN.—RARE CHARITY.—OLD AND HOMELESS.—THE “O’CLO’” JEW.—DR. HUNTER’S GENEROSITY.—“WHAT’S THE PRICE OF BEEF?”—A SAD OMISSION.—INNATE GENEROSITY.—A CURB-STONE MONEY-MANIAC.—AN EYE-OPENER.—AN AVARICIOUS DOCTOR.—ROBBING THE DEAD.
Side by side, hand in hand, through the world, go generosity and meanness. If these could but be personified, and the individuals compelled to stand before men in broad daylight, O, what a staring would there be! Those whom we thought the very embodiment of generosity and kindness would “crop out” in their true hideousness of character—unmasked meanness and selfishness; yes, men too high in the estimation of the world, in church and in state.