"This," said Charles Lamb, "is the greatest pleasure I know." "Money
never yet made a man happy," said Franklin; "and there is nothing in its
nature to produce happiness." To do good with it, makes life a delight
to the giver. How happy, then, was the life of Jean Ingelow, since what
she received from the sale of a hundred thousand copies of her poems,
and fifty thousand of her prose works, she spent largely in charity; one
unique charity being a "copyright" dinner three times a week to twelve
poor persons just discharged from the neighboring hospitals! Nor was any
one made happier by it than the poet.
John Buskin inherited a million dollars. "With this money he set about
doing good," says a writer in the "Arena." "Poor young men and women who
were struggling to get an education were helped, homes for working men
and women were established, and model apartment houses were erected. He
also promoted a work for reclaiming waste land outside of London. This
land was used for the aid of unfortunate men who wished to rise again
from the state in which they had fallen through cruel social conditions
and their own weaknesses. It is said that this work suggested to General
Booth his colonization farms. Ruskin has also ever been liberal in
aiding poor artists, and has done much to encourage artistic taste among
the young. On one occasion he purchased ten fine water-color paintings
by Holman Hunt for $3,750, to be hung in the public schools of London.
By 1877 he had disposed of three-fourths of his inheritance, besides all
the income from his books. But the calls of the poor, and his plans
looking toward educating and ennobling the lives of working men, giving
more sunshine and joy, were such that he determined to dispose of all
the remainder of his wealth except a sum sufficient to yield him $1,500
a year on which to live."
Our own Peter Cooper, in his last days, was one of the happiest men in
America; his beneficence shone in his countenance.
Let the man who has the blues take a map and census table of the world,
and estimate how many millions there are who would gladly exchange lots
with him, and let him begin upon some practicable plan to do all the
good he can to as many as he can, and he will forget to be despondent;
and he need not stop short at praying for them without first giving
every dollar he can, without troubling the Lord about that. Let him
scatter his flowers as he goes along, since he will never go over the
same road again.
No man in England had a better time than did Du Maurier on that cold day
when he took the hat of an old soldier on Hampstead road, and sent him
away to the soup kitchen in Euston to get warm. The artist chalked on a
blackboard such portraits as he commonly made for "Punch," and soon
gathered a great quantity of small coins for the grateful soldier; who,
however, at once rubbed out Du Maurier's pictures and put on "the
faithful dog," and a battle scene, as more artistic.
"Chinese Gordon," after serving faithfully and valiantly in the great
Chinese rebellion, and receiving the highest honors of the Chinese
Empire, returned to England, caring little for the praise thus heaped on
him. He took some position at Gravesend, just below London, where he
filled his house with boys from the streets, whom he taught and made men
of, and then secured them places on ships,--following them all over the
world with letters of advice and encouragement.