Such are the possible humiliations of the receiver. But the giver is exposed to dangers hardly less. His gifts may be selfish rather than generous. Few pleasures are greater than giving. In it we feel our power and catch a sense of the creative efficiency of our will. One often gives for the sake of indulging this self-assertion, with small regard for the receiver. Then too, while a true gift costs the giver something, he who gives out of his abundance may hardly feel the loss, though feeling full well the glow of raising the helpless to prosperity. That glow is by no means reprehensible. It is one of our purest pleasures. “All earthly joys go less To the one joy of doing kindnesses.” But it should not be reckoned as generosity. Should we not, too, in estimating the altruistic worth of gifts deduct the many seeming gifts which are prompted by shame? When asked for a subscription, I cannot well refuse and continue to hold my place in public esteem. _Noblesse oblige._ One must pay for dignity. It will not do, then, to assume that giving is always an altruistic act. It may be. Yet even where it is genuinely addressed to improving the condition of some needy person, the danger is not absent of lowering the independence of that other, of making him through our will our conscious inferior, and accordingly implying disparagement in our very bounty. If in giving we always keep the better end of the transaction for ourselves and hand the poorer to another, few adjustments of social life will call for more tact. Yet we are all of us receivers and generally manage to be such without loss of dignity. Under what circumstances may we and may we not preserve our self-respect and still take money? If a stranger passing me on the street hands me a five-dollar bill, I should feel myself disgraced if it went into my pocket. If one I did not know wrote from a distant State his enjoyment of a book of mine, enclosing a check, I should return the check. If finding a person in distress and helping him he offered me money, I should refuse it. Independence is dear to most of us and we do not care to part with it on grounds so casual. This is the condemnation of “tipping,” that abominable practice introduced from countries more servile than ours. It cheapens him who gives and him who takes. I see only four occasions where the acceptance of money is compatible with manhood.