“Organizations! Good Heavens, I should think there were! I tried ’em once. I got that philanthropic bee in my bonnet, and I gave thousands, tens of thousands to ’em. Then I got to wondering where the money went.”

Unexpectedly the lawyer chuckled.

“You never did like to invest without investigating, Fulton,” he observed.

With only a shrug for an answer the other plunged on.

“Now, understand. I’m not saying that organized charity isn’t all right, and doesn’t do good, of course. Neither am I prepared to propose anything to take its place. And maybe the two or three I dealt with were particularly addicted to the sort of thing I objected to. But, honestly, Ned, if you’d lost heart and friends and money, and were just ready to chuck the whole shooting-match, how would you like to become a ‘Case,’ say, number twenty-three thousand seven hundred and forty-one, ticketed and docketed, and duly apportioned off to a six-by-nine rule of ‘do this’ and ‘do that,’ while a dozen spectacled eyes watched you being cleaned up and regulated and wound up with a key made of just so much and no more pats and preachments carefully weighed and labeled? How would you like it?”

The lawyer laughed.

“I know; but, my dear fellow, what would you have? Surely, unorganized charity and promiscuous giving is worse—”

“Oh, yes, I’ve tried that way, too,” shrugged the other. “There was a time when every Tom, Dick, and Harry, with a run-down shoe and a ragged coat, could count on me for a ten-spot by just holding out his hand, no questions asked. Then a serious-eyed little woman sternly told me one day that the indiscriminate charity of a millionaire was not only a curse to any community, but a corruption to the whole state. I believe she kindly included the nation, as well, bless her! And I thought I was doing good!” “What a blow—to you!” There was a whimsical smile in the lawyer’s eyes.

“It was.” The millionaire was not smiling. “But she was right. It set me to thinking, and I began to follow up those ten-spots—the ones that I could trace. Jove! what a mess I’d made of it! Oh, some of them were all right, of course, and I made those fifties on the spot. But the others—! I tell you, Ned, money that isn’t earned is the most risky thing in the world. If I’d left half those wretches alone, they’d have braced up and helped themselves and made men of themselves, maybe. As it was—Well, you never can tell as to the results of a 

 Prev. P 4/198 next