Impressions and experiences

by William Dean Howells

I put my hand into my hip-pocket, where I keep my silver, and found nothing there but half a dollar. This at once changed the whole current of my feelings; and it was not chill penury that repressed my noble rage, but chill affluence. It was manifestly wrong to give half a dollar to a man who had no hands, or to any sort of beggar. I was willing to commit a small act of incivism, but I had not the courage to flout political economy to the extent of fifty cents; and I felt that when I was bidden “Give to him that asketh,” I was never meant to give so much as a half-dollar, but a cent, or a half-dime, or at the most a quarter. I wished I had a quarter. I would gladly have given a quarter, but there was nothing in my pocket but that fatal, that inexorably indivisible half-dollar, the continent of two quarters, but not practically a quarter. I would have asked anybody in sight to change it for me, but there was no one passing; it was a quiet street of brown-stone dwellings, and not a thronged thoroughfare at any time. At that hour of the late afternoon it was deserted, except for the beggar and myself; and I am not sure that he had any business to be sitting there, on the steps of another man’s house, or that I had the right to encourage his invasion by giving him anything. For a moment I did not know quite what to do. To be sure, I was not bound to the man in any way. He had not asked me for charity, and I had barely paused before him; I could go on and ignore the incident. I thought of doing this, but then I thought of the bad conscience I should be certain to have, and I could not go on. I glanced across the street, and near the corner I saw a decent-looking restaurant; and “Wait a minute,” I said to the man, as if he were likely to go away, and I ran across to get my half-dollar changed at the restaurant.

I was now quite resolved to give him a quarter, and be done with it; the thing was getting to be a bore. But when I entered the restaurant I saw no one there but a young man quite at the end of a long room; and when he had come all the way forward to find what I wanted, I was ashamed to ask him to change my half-dollar, and I pretended that I wanted a package of Sweet Caporal cigarettes, which I did not want, and which it was a pure waste for me to buy, since I do not smoke, though doubtless it was better to buy them and encourage commerce than to give the half-dollar and encourage beggary. At any rate, I instinctively felt that I had political economy on my side in the transaction, and I made haste to go back to the man on the steps, and secure myself with Christian charity too. On the way over to him, however, I decided that I would not give him a quarter, and I ended by poising fifteen cents on one of his outstretched stumps.

He seemed very grateful, and thanked me earnestly, with a little note of surprise in his voice, as if he were not used to such splendid charity as that; and in fact, I suppose very few people gave so handsomely to him. He spoke with a German accent; and when I asked him how he had lost his hands, he answered, “Frost. Frozen off, here in the city.” I could not go on and ask him for further particulars, for I thought it but too likely that he had been drunk when exposed to weather that would freeze one’s hands off, and that he was now paying the penalty of his debauchery. I was in no wise so much at peace with myself as I had expected to be; and I was still less so when a young girl halted as she came by, and, seeing what I had done, and hearing what the man said, put a dime on the other stump. She looked poor herself; her sack was quite shabby about the seams. I did not think she could afford to give so much to a single beggar, and I was aware of having tempted her to the excess by my own profusion. If she had seen me giving the man only a nickel, she would perhaps have given him a cent, which was probably all she could afford.

II.

I came away feeling indescribably squalid. I perceived now that I could have taken my stand upon the high ground of discouraging street beggary, and given nothing; but having once lowered myself to the level of the early Christians, I ought to have given the half-dollar. It did not console me to remember the surprise in the man’s gratitude, and to reflect that I had probably given him at least three times as much as he usually got from the tenderest-hearted people. I perceived that I had been the divinely appointed bearer of half a dollar to his mutilation and his misery, and I had given him fifteen cents out of it, and wasted ten, and kept the other twenty-five; in other words, I had embezzled the greater part of the money intrusted to me for him.

When I got home and told them at dinner just what I had done, they all agreed that I had done a mighty shabby thing. I do not know whether the reader will agree with them or not—perhaps I would rather not know; and on the other hand, I shall not ask him what he would have done in the like case. Now that it is laid before him in all its shameless nakedness, I dare say he will pretend that he would have given the half-dollar. But I doubt if he would; and there is a curious principle governing this whole matter of giving, which I would like him to consider with me. Charity is a very simple thing when you look at it from the standpoint of the good Christian, but it is very complex when you look at it from the standpoint of the good citizen; and there seems to be an instinctive effort on our part to reconcile two duties by a certain proportion which we observe in giving. Whether we say so to ourselves or not, we behave as if it would be the wildest folly to give at all in the measure Christ bade; and by an apt psychological juggle we adjust our succor to the various degrees of need that present themselves. To the absolutely destitute it is plain that anything will be better than nothing, and so we give the smallest charity to those who need charity most. I dare say people will deny this, but it is true, all the same, as the reader will allow when he thinks about it. We act upon a kind of logic in the matter, though I do not suppose many act consciously upon it. Here is a man whispering to you in the dark that he has not had anything to eat all day, and does not know where to sleep. Shall you give him a dollar to get a good supper and a decent lodging? Certainly not: you shall give him a dime, and trust that some one else will give him another; or if you have some charity tickets about you, then you give him one of them, and go away feeling that you have at once befriended and outwitted him; for the supposition is that he is a fraud, and has been trying to work you.

This is not a question which affects the excellence of the charities system. I know how good and kind and just that is; but it is a question that affects the whole Christian philosophy of giving. A friend, whom I was talking the matter over with, was inclined to doubt whether Christ’s doctrine was applicable, in its sweeping simplicity, to our complex modern conditions; whether it was final, whether it was the last word, as we say. Of course it does seem a little absurd to give to him that asketh, when you do not know what he is going to do with the money, and when you do not know whether he has not come to want by his own fault, or whether he is really in want.

III.