If the risks in offering opportunities of growth are somewhat greater than in the case of other forms of gift, the need is greater too, and the results, if accomplished, more considerable. Arrangements for gifts of this highest sort are often properly made on a vast scale. They include churches, colleges, schools, lecture-foundations, museums. These are all public agencies for promoting growth. The private means are surer, family life. Yet here how often parents will offer gifts of an inferior sort, things or pleasures, careless whether they meet the needs of growth. The truest benefactor is he who is willing to disappoint or pain us if by so doing he can open doors for ampler powers. Our greatest need is for enlargement. Whoever contributes to that is our most beneficent giver. But human need is only one of the two claims to gifts grounded in the nature of the receiver. We should likewise pay attention to numbers. If I have a loaf of bread to give away, and all about me hungry persons stand, I do wrong in handing half of it to one of them for a hearty meal and putting off the others, equally needy, with a small slice. At the beginning I should have studied numbers and kept a fair distribution in mind. In these days when every mail brings us three or four demands for subscriptions to excellent causes, which we would gladly aid, the question of distribution becomes perplexing. We wish to make our gifts go as far as possible. If we are hardy and dutiful, we plan according to need and number; if weak and compliant, we meet each soliciting letter with a formal subscription, just enough to be counted, and feel ourselves discharged from a difficult problem.