My own incarceration was of no long duration. My contumacy, as it was called, was considered extraordinary; but it was generally thought to be owing to a mistaken humanity, and a perverted, Quixotic conscientiousness, such as are common enough among persons of the persuasion I then belonged to. This, and perhaps the circumstance that I was yet in feeble health (for the trial, as I said, took place soon after I left my bed), caused me to be treated with lenity; and in a few days I was liberated. All this, I beg the reader to understand, happened before the reconciliation with my nephew Jonathan, and, of course, before I had well begun my career of philanthropy. Of that career, of some of my deeds of goodness, and of the consequences they produced, I shall now speak. 7. CHAPTER VII. THE SORROWS OF A PHILANTHROPIST. My benevolence was of a two-fold character, being both theoretic and practical. In the latter sense, is to be regarded the relief which I granted with my own hands to such suffering persons as I could lay them on; and there was no way in which I did not personally relieve some one wretch or other. By the former, I understand a thousand schemes which I devised and framed, to enlist the sympathies of communities, and so relieve the afflicted in a mass; besides a thousand others which were designed to bestow upon the poor and vicious that virtuous knowledge and those virtuous principles, which are better than alms of gold and silver. I instituted some half a dozen charitable societies, to supply fuel, clothing, food, and employment to the suffering poor; as well as others to exhort them to economy, industry, prudence, fortitude, and so forth. I formed societies even among themselves, classing divers isolated creatures into bands, who wrought in common, and disposed of their wares, either in a shop kept for the purpose, or at fairs. I established schools to keep the children of the poor out of mischief, and one in particular I supported solely from my own, that is to say, Zachariah Longstraw's pocket. I bestowed much of my regards upon the poor wretches in prison, doing all that I was permitted to effect a reformation in their habits and feelings; and I took uncommon pains to scatter light and sentiments of a civilized character among the worthy representatives of the Green Island, who make up so large a portion of our suffering population.