XVII

INCENTIVES FROM DOING GOOD

W

HAT is thus an experienced fact in ordinary business or professional life that accomplishment spurs accomplishment-is especially true of the consciousness of being useful. There is a zest in doing good, a spice to the cup you share with another, which was never tasted in a drink of selfish pleasure, not even in the intoxicating draught of secular triumph.

A benevolent gentleman gave a picnic excursion to nearly a thousand poor children. We asked him to pick out the happiest boy in the crowd. He glanced a moment at the rollicking mass of little manhood, then tapped his own bosom, "The happiest boy is in here; and happier than he ever was when a boy; for then he was only one boy, now he is hundreds."

The late Dr. Maltby D. Babcock used to talk of the "fun of doing good" and tell of the intensely practical jokes he sometimes played on poor people, relieving their wants in such a manner that they thought good luck had fallen their way. The writer was once used as the secret

agent of a gentleman, to place a thousand dollars in the way of a young student, who was left to the sweet delusion that he had earned it and was paying his own way through college. This foxy old fellow agreed to lift the mortgage from a certain farm if John, who wouldn't marry Jane until it was paid, would instantly celebrate the nuptials that had already been twenty years delayed; and he also sent the dominie a good fee for his complicity in the plot.

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The old English meaning of "Lord" suggests the highest aristocracy. It is compounded of Hlaf, loaf, and weard, guardian; the most lordly person is he who protects the living of others. Lady" is only the Anglo-Saxon feminine for "Lord" and means the same thing, the woman who is most useful to others. What a shameful degeneracy where the title comes to mean fine clothes, equipage, and social superciliousnessthe latter word meaning high-eyebrow-ism, in contrast with the spirit of helpfulness which expands the heart until it domes like the sky!

We frequently cite Professor Huxley for his scientific observations. Like all great men he saw more deeply than his specialty; that as the laws of the universe are based upon the underlying purpose of making a beneficent universe, so all study of science should have for its object the beneficence resulting from increased knowledge. Toward the close of his life he proved his title

to "scientist" in the profoundest sense, for he confessed that beyond all honors that had come to him for successful research was the knowledge that he had helped some people to carry life's load with less strain and fret and care.

It was so with Michael Faraday. His friend John Tyndall said of him, “He prized the love and sympathy of men almost more than the renown which his science had brought him. He said, 'The sweetest reward of my work is the sympathy and good will which it has caused to flow in upon me from all parts of the world.'" Men loved him, not because he was great, but because they saw that all his greatness was consecrated to helpfulness. His discoveries flashed light both material and moral. He never allowed a discovery to be announced with any interpretation lessening faith in God; never let it fall as a cold ray which a pessimist could use to chill human aspiration and hope; but always saw to it that, like the sunshine, it was charged with warmth as well as with the light.

How much deeper incentive did Washington feel than ever animated a mere soldier in the field. Bonaparte would not have endured a Valley Forge. The Frenchman sat down by the roadside all woe-begone, on the retreat from Moscow. It was because his soul had nothing beneath it broader than itself, his ambition all personal. Washington could say, "If I know my

own mind, I could offer myself a living sacrifice to the butchering enemy, provided that would contribute to the people's ease. I would be a willing offering to savage fury and die by inches to save the people." Such a spirit is unconquerable.

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The good word "beneficence was first used in its French equivalent by the Abbé de Saint Pierre, whose incessant benefactions, as the almoner of the Duchess of Orléans, were illustrations of the meaning of the word. Henri Martin, the French historian, describes him as a pure and naïve soul, a writer without talent, of a mind little elevated, but in which an indefatigable love of the public good took the place of genius. He was constantly occupied during his long and peaceful career with the interests of the country and humanity. Our language owes to him the word 'beneficence,' which he was worthy to invent." We may take exception to Martin's statement that the Abbé was without talent," and think rather of the motto of King John of Portugal, “The talent to do good," as indicating the most royal of all talents.

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Mrs. Ward, in her novel "Marcella," says, Aristocratic as we are, no party can afford to choose its men by any other criterion than personal profitableness. And a man nowadays is in the long run personally profitable far more by what he is than by what he has so far at least

has 'progress' brought us." A hint this to young men who are ambitious for political honor and influence. If they are not good for the country, for the material, social, or moral uplift of the people, they will surely be voted good for nothing, and relegated to the "back seats which are already crowded with those who have sacrificed honest private business for political leadership, imagining that they could attain the latter without "making themselves solid" with real public interests.

They say that "every man has his price." If so, it is also true that some men come too high to be bought by any money consideration. The renown of Abraham is not only for his faith, but for the magnanimity. Recall an incident. Chedolaomer was the "Ravager of the West," a title of which he was so proud that, according to some archæologists, he inscribed it upon the bricks of his palace, recently exhumed at Ur. On one of his terrible expeditions westward he ravaged the Jordan Valley. Among the captives was Lot, Abraham's nephew. The patriarch hastily got together a little band of his men, made a night attack upon the rear of Chedolaomer's army, recaptured the prisoners, and brought back the spoil. It was splendidly done. On his return the King of Sodom, overjoyed at the rescue of his people, begged Abraham to keep all the spoil for himself as his personal reward. The pa