I have long thought that a handbook should be compiled for the benefit of persons, like yourself, who are philanthropically disposed but don’t know what to do. It might have some such title as “Philanthropic Hints to Those about to Make their Wills,” or “The Inspired Testator,” or “First Aid to Imaginative Bequest” or “The Prudent Lawyer Confounded” or “How to be Happy though Dead.” In this book an alphabetical list would be given of the less fortunate ones of the earth and suggestions offered as to what a little money could do towards a periodic gilding of their existence. No one could compile it without the assistance of my London Charity report or similar works.
For a change let me give you a poem in prose:—
FATHER-LOVE
One hears so much of mother-love.
The phrase alone is expected to touch the very springs of emotion.
There are songs about it, set to maudlin music; there is, in America, a Mother’s Day.
God knows I have no desire to bring the faintest suspicion of ridicule to such a feeling, even to such a fashion;
The stronger the bonds that unite mothers and children the better for human society;