I put my hand into my hip-pocket, where I keep my silver, and found
nothing there but half a dollar. This at once changed the whole current
of my feelings; and it was not chill penury that repressed my noble
rage, but chill affluence. It was manifestly wrong to give half a
dollar to a man who had no hands, or to any sort of beggar. I was
willing to commit a small act of incivism, but I had not the courage
to flout political economy to the extent of fifty cents; and I felt
that when I was bidden “Give to him that asketh,” I was never meant to
give so much as a half-dollar, but a cent, or a half-dime, or at the
most a quarter. I wished I had a quarter. I would gladly have given
a quarter, but there was nothing in my pocket but that fatal, that
inexorably indivisible half-dollar, the continent of two quarters,
but not practically a quarter. I would have asked anybody in sight to
change it for me, but there was no one passing; it was a quiet street
of brown-stone dwellings, and not a thronged thoroughfare at any time.
At that hour of the late afternoon it was deserted, except for the
beggar and myself; and I am not sure that he had any business to be
sitting there, on the steps of another man’s house, or that I had the
right to encourage his invasion by giving him anything. For a moment I
did not know quite what to do. To be sure, I was not bound to the man
in any way. He had not asked me for charity, and I had barely paused
before him; I could go on and ignore the incident. I thought of doing
this, but then I thought of the bad conscience I should be certain to
have, and I could not go on. I glanced across the street, and near the
corner I saw a decent-looking restaurant; and “Wait a minute,” I said
to the man, as if he were likely to go away, and I ran across to get my
half-dollar changed at the restaurant.
I was now quite resolved to give him a quarter, and be done with it;
the thing was getting to be a bore. But when I entered the restaurant
I saw no one there but a young man quite at the end of a long room;
and when he had come all the way forward to find what I wanted, I was
ashamed to ask him to change my half-dollar, and I pretended that I
wanted a package of Sweet Caporal cigarettes, which I did not want, and
which it was a pure waste for me to buy, since I do not smoke, though
doubtless it was better to buy them and encourage commerce than to give
the half-dollar and encourage beggary. At any rate, I instinctively
felt that I had political economy on my side in the transaction, and I
made haste to go back to the man on the steps, and secure myself with
Christian charity too. On the way over to him, however, I decided that
I would not give him a quarter, and I ended by poising fifteen cents on
one of his outstretched stumps.
He seemed very grateful, and thanked me earnestly, with a little note
of surprise in his voice, as if he were not used to such splendid
charity as that; and in fact, I suppose very few people gave so
handsomely to him. He spoke with a German accent; and when I asked
him how he had lost his hands, he answered, “Frost. Frozen off, here
in the city.” I could not go on and ask him for further particulars,
for I thought it but too likely that he had been drunk when exposed to
weather that would freeze one’s hands off, and that he was now paying
the penalty of his debauchery. I was in no wise so much at peace with
myself as I had expected to be; and I was still less so when a young
girl halted as she came by, and, seeing what I had done, and hearing
what the man said, put a dime on the other stump. She looked poor
herself; her sack was quite shabby about the seams. I did not think she
could afford to give so much to a single beggar, and I was aware of
having tempted her to the excess by my own profusion. If she had seen
me giving the man only a nickel, she would perhaps have given him a
cent, which was probably all she could afford.