"Charity begins at home," says, or rather said, an admirable old proverb; but alack! the adage, or the times, or both, are out of joint--the wholesome maxim has lost its force--and homes for Charity must now be far as the _Poles_ asunder, ere the benign influence of the weeping goddess can fall upon its wretched supplicants. In private life the neglect of a domestic hearth for the vainglorious squandering abroad of the means that could and ought to render that the chief seat of comfort and independence, calls down upon the thoughtless and heartless squanderer and abuser of his means the just indignation and merited contempt of every thinking and properly constituted mind. The "Charity" that does not begin at home is the worst species of unjustifiable prodigality, and the first step to the absolute ruin of the "nearest and dearest" for the sake of the profligate and abandoned. And no sophistry can justify the apparent liberality that deprives others of their just and urgent dues. It may be and is most noble to feed the widow and to clothe the orphan; but where is the beneficence of the deed if the wife and children of the ostentatious donor--the victims of the performance of such acts--are left themselves to endure misery and privations, from which his inadequate means cannot exempt the stranger and the giver's own household! The sparrow who unwittingly rears the cuckoo's spurious offspring, tending with care the ultimate destroyer of its own young, does so in perfect ignorance of the results about to follow the misplaced affection. The cravings of the interloper are satisfied to the detriment of its own offspring; and when the full-fledged recipient of its misplaced bounty no longer needs its aid, the thankless stranger wings its way on its far-off course, selfishly careless of the fostering bird that brought it into life; and this may be looked upon as one of the results generally attendant upon a blind forgetfulness of _where_ our first endeavours for the amelioration of the wants of others should be made.