LESSON XIV. THE WAYS OF CHARITY. "The Holy Supper is kept indeed, In whatso we share with another's need; Not that which we give, but what we share. For the gift without the giver is bare: Who bestows himself, with his alms feeds three,-- Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." LOWELL. "It may not be our lot to wield The sickle in the ripened field; Nor ours to hear on summer eves, The reaper's song among the sheaves; Yet, when our duty's task is wrought, In unison with God's great thought, The near and future blend in one, And whatsoe'er is willed is done." WHITTIER. I have come to entertain very serious doubts about my "orthodoxy" on the subject of doing good. If I know my own motives, I certainly have a desire to do good; but this desire is yoke fellow with the perverse wish to do it in my own way. I do not feel myself inclined to accept the prescriptions of those who have taken out patents for various ingenious processes in this line of effort. My attention has just been attracted to this subject, by the perusal of a long story, which must be not far from the one hundred and ninety-ninth that I have read during the past twenty years, all tipped with the same general moral. A good-natured lady, in easy circumstances, and of benevolent impulses, is appealed to by a poor man in the kitchen. She feeds him, gives him clothes, sends him away rejoicing, and feels good over it. The man comes again and again, tells pitiful stories, excites her benevolence of course, and secures a reasonable amount of additional plunder. Months pass away; and being out upon a walk one pleasant afternoon, and finding herself near the poor man's residence, the fair benefactress calls upon him. She finds the wife (who was reported dead) very comfortable indeed, and the destitute family of four children reduced to a single fat and saucy baby, and the poor liar himself smelling strongly of rum. Then come the denouement, and a grand tableau: lady very much grieved and astonished--wife, who has known nothing of her husband's tricks, exceedingly bewildered--fuddled husband, blind with rum and remorse, owns up to his meanness and duplicity. He found (as he confessed) that he could work upon the lady's sympathies, got to lying and couldn't stop, and, finally, felt so badly over the whole operation, that he took to drink to drown his conscience! _Moral:_ Women should not help poor people without going to see them, and finding out whether they lie.