"It is the Dead Hand that you dread."
"That may be so, sir. You air in the inside track, and you ought to know what to call it. But no Hand, dead or alive, shall ever get hold of my stamps."
"Your stamps?"
"My stamps, sir; my greenbacks, my dollars. For I've got them, and I mean to spend them. 'Spend what you can, and give what you cannot spend,' says the Voice to Gilead P. Beck."
"But, my dear sir, if you mean to give away a quarter of a million a year, you will have every improvident and extravagant rogue in the country about you. You will have to answer hundreds of letters a day. You will be deluged with prospectuses, forms, and appeals. You will be called names unless you give to this institution or to that——"
"I shall give nothing to any society."
"And what about the widows of clergymen, the daughters of officers, the nieces of Church dignitaries, the governess who is starving, the tradesman who wants a hundred pounds for a fortnight, and will repay you with blessings and 25 per cent. after depositing in your hand as security all his pawn-tickets."
"Every boat wants steering, but I was not born last Sunday, and the ways of big cities, though they may be crooked, air pretty well known to me. There are not many lines of life in which Gilead P. Beck has not tried to walk."
"My dear sir, do you propose to act the part of Universal Philanthropist and Distributor at large?"
"No, sir, I do not. And that puzzles me too. I should like to be quiet over it. There was a man down to Lexington, when I was a boy, who said he liked his religion unostentatious. So he took a pipe on a Sunday morning and sat in the churchyard listening to the bummin' and the singin' within. Perhaps, sir, that man knew his own business. Perhaps thoughts came over his soul when they gave out the Psalm that he wouldn't have had if he'd gone inside, to sit with his back upright against a plank, his legs curled up below the seat, and his eyes wandering around among the gells. Maybe that is my case, too, Mr. Cassilis. I should like my giving to be unostentatious."