The writer has never known any system for dispensing charity more successful than the one by which a town or city is divided into districts, and each district is committed to the care of two ladies, whose duty it is to call on each family and leave a book for a child, or do some other deed of neighborly kindness, and make that the occasion for entering into conversation and learning the situation of all residents in the district. By this method the ignorant, the vicious, and the poor are discovered, and their physical, intellectual, and moral wants are investigated. In some places where the writer has known this mode pursued, each person retained the same district year after year; so that every poor family in the place was under the watch and care of some intelligent and benevolent lady, who used all her influence to secure a proper education for the children, to furnish them with suitable reading, to encourage habits of industry and economy, and to secure regular attendance on public religious instruction. Thus the rich and the poor were brought in contact in a way advantageous to both parties; and if such a system could be universally adopted, more would be done for the prevention of poverty and vice than all the wealth of the nation could avail for their relief. But this plan can not be successfully carried out in this manner, unless there is a large proportion of intelligent, benevolent, and self-denying persons who unite in a systematic plan. But there is one species of “charity” which needs especial consideration. It is that spirit of kindly love which induces us to refrain from judging of the means and the relative charities of other persons. There have been such indistinct notions, and so many different standards of duty on this subject, that it is rare for two persons to think exactly alike in regard to the rule of duty. Each person is bound to inquire and judge for himself as to his own duty or deficiencies; but as both the resources and the amount of the actual charities of others are beyond our ken, it is as indecorous as it is uncharitable to sit in judgment on their decisions. CHAPTER XXVI. THE CARE OF INFANTS.