The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1875-10-31
DALI Y CHARITIES.

There is queer, one-sided notion of charity
which q very large number of people, especl-
ally religious conscientious women OF small
means, are apt to adopt. and to carry out
rigidly in their daily domestic lives. 1t is,
that duty requires them to save money in
every legitimate way, and then give certain
amount to the church or to the poor. GER
tain little woman that we know inexorably
sets aside tenth of her small income for
charity most admirable resolve, as every
body will acknowledge. But, in order to in
crease this 1.-THE, she lays burdens on herself,
her husband and her servants, hard to bear.
Diet in her system is reduced to its plainest
and least tempting conditions; economy is
brought to bear on the quality OF the meat, its
seasoning-the very coal. and the time re-
quired for its preparation. The boys sit down
day after day the year round to the bare, I'M
inviting table, with its coarse cloth and
meagre dishes of oatmeal porridge, and
stewed apples, or chops and potatoes, which
they know have been counted before they
were boiled. Their mother wonders why their
appetites flag, and why her dinner. table is
never the pleasant, jolly place OF meeting
which the boys declare their Aunt Rousby's
to be. She evil not think so ill of her
sons. she declares, "as to believe that their
tempers would be improved, or their love
for their mother quickened, by occasional
qualification of their stomachs," or, as she
puts it, "their carnal appetites." But the fact
remains that the Rousoy boys are rosy and
happy, and as long as they live will remember
mothers custards or chicken pie as a way in
which she showed her love for them, Will 9
their cousins know and care nothing about
their mothers hours of prayer and wakeful.
ness on their behalf. This charitable woman,
too, wears the coarsest and ugliest costume
for the sake OF economy and selt-mortifca-
ton, and yet is miserable because her hus-
band has long ago ceased to pay her lover-like
compliments, and SO often notices Jane Rous-
bys rosy cheeks and pretty breakfast caps.
In q word, she makes her home bare, niggard-
ly, uninviung to her husband and sons, and
drives them elsewhere for amusement and
comfort. She is mean to the very outer edge
of honesty in her dealings with the butcher,
milkmsn and baker. She hires her servants
ct the lowest wages and takes advantage of
the hard times to bring down the washerwo-
mans pay per dozen to starvation rates. She
has traffic in q small way with twenty poor peo-
ple-hucksters, cobblers. sewing women, all
struggling honestly to keep soul and body to-
gether through this hard year. Liberal pay
for their labor, few pennies here, dollar
there, given as wages, not aims, with hearty
praise for work well done, would have helped
many a sore heart and warmed many cold
06AItu, OUT sue Will Tell yOu tuht uuty requires
her to give, not pay, her 1.-THE of charity. 1t
goes, therefore, to applicants of whom she
knows nothing, or to organized associations:
is sometimes well and as often ill bestowed.
The quality of mercy and its substance,
whether that be money, old clothes or cold
victuals, is much more apt to bless those who
give than those who take, unless there be
personal sympathy given with it. The poor
est beggar takes mere aims with q sullen
sense OF injustice. If our conscientious
friend, and our readers who are of her per-
suasion, would contrive to turn the aims given
from their household into wages, and their
homilies into sympathy, the coming winter
would not prove SO prolific in well-fed tramps
and starving tradesmen.
There are other kinds of charity which are
much more helpful than money giving, and
are frequently practicable by those who have
least money to give. There is influence; the
personal trouble required to write a letter or
to make call, in order to find pupils for the
poor visiting governess, or more work for the