Chapter 7 THE SORROWS OF A PHILANTHROPIST.

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My benevolence was of a two-fold character, being both theoretic and practical. In the latter sense, is to be regarded the relief which I granted with my own hands to such suffering persons as I could lay them on; and there was no way in which I did not personally relieve some one wretch or other. By the former, I understand a thousand schemes which I devised and framed, to enlist the sympathies of communities, and so relieve the afflicted in a mass; besides a thousand others which were designed to bestow upon the poor and vicious that virtuous knowledge and those virtuous principles, which are better than alms of gold and silver. I instituted some half a dozen charitable societies, to supply fuel, clothing, food, and employment to the suffering poor; as well as others to exhort them to economy, industry, prudence, fortitude, and so forth. I formed societies even among themselves, classing divers isolated creatures into bands, who wrought in common, and disposed of their wares, either in a shop kept for the purpose, or at fairs. I established schools to keep the children of the poor out of mischief, and one in particular I supported solely from my own, that is to say, Zachariah Longstraw's pocket.

I bestowed much of my regards upon the poor wretches in prison, doing all that I was permitted to effect a reformation in their habits and feelings; and I took uncommon pains to scatter light and sentiments of a civilized character among the worthy representatives of the Green Island, who make up so large a portion of our suffering population.

And let it not be supposed that I neglected that other class of poor creatures, called negroes, whom, although allowed the name, and most of the privileges of freemen, their white brethren refuse to take to their bosoms, merely because they have black faces, woolly heads, and an ill savour of body. For myself, verily, if they were not comely in my sight, nor agreeable to my nostrils, I said, "Heaven hath made them so;" and although my nephew Jonathan insisted that Heaven had done the same thing with other animals, and that, upon my principles, men should be as affectionate with pigs and badgers as they were with cats and lap-dogs, I perceived that they were my brethern, and that it became me to conquer the prejudices lying only in my eyes and nostrils. I girded my loins to the work, and verily, I prevailed over the weakness of the old Adam. Of a verity, I was the African's friend.

But, oh! the wickedness of the world, and the ingratitude thereof! The heart of man is even as the soil of the earth, which, the more it is stirred up by cultivation, the more barren and worthless it becomes. It is as the fields of the Ancient Dominion, where, if a man soweth barley and corn, he shall reap a harvest of Jamestown weed, poke-berries, and scrub pines. It is as the bulldog that one feedeth with beef and other wholesome viands, who, the moment he has done his dinner, snaps, for his dessert, at the feeder's heel. It is as the tender flowers, which, in the winter-time, a man taketh from the cold, to warm, by night, in his chamber, and which smother him with foul air before morning. Verily, it was my lot to find, even as my nephew Jonathan had once foolishly contended, that even philanthropy is not secure from the sting of unthankfulness-that benevolence is, in one sense, the great parent of ingratitude-since it begets it. For a period of full seven months (for so long did I remain in Zachariah's body, after recoving my health), I laboured to do good to my fellows, and, verily, I laboured with might and main. Yet, had I toiled with the same energy to injure and oppress, I almost doubt whether I should have been rewarded with more manifold outpourings of wrath and fury. Verily, as I said before, the world is a wicked world, and I begin to doubt whether man can make it better.

One of the first mishaps that befell me was of the following nature. Stepping one morning into the mayor's office, which was a favourite haunt with me, seeing that misery doth there greatly abound, I fell upon a man whom the magistrate was about to commit to jail, for being drunk and beating his wife and children, he being unable to pay the fine imposed upon him, and to find surety for his future good behaviour.

The spirit stirred within me as I beheld the contrite looks of the culprit, and I said to myself-"While he lies in jail, his poor wife and his infants may perish with hunger." I paid the fine, and, though the mayor did very broadly hint to me that a little punishment would do the man good, and his wife too, seeing that he was a barbarous fellow, I offered myself for his security, and thus sent him back to his rejoicing family. I said to myself-"This very night will I witness the happiness I have created." I went accordingly to the man's house, where I found the wicked fellow raving with drink, and beating his wife as before, his children screaming with terror, and the neighbours crying out for a constable. I did but say a word of reprehension to him, when the brutish ingrate, leaving his rib, fell foul of myself, mauling me cruelly; and I believe he would have beaten me to death, had I not been rescued by the timely appearance of a constable. "Thee sees the end of thy humanity!" said the mayor, when I entered his office the next morning, that my black eye and bruised visage might testify against the ungrateful man; "thee will not object to my committing the fellow now?"

"Nay," said I; "it is drunkenness that has made the poor man mad. Therefore lock him up in prison until his madness hath departed."

"I will," said the mayor; "and thee will have the goodness to pay over to the clerk the hundred dollars in which thee bound thyself that the rascal should keep the peace."

"Verily," said I, "it is not just I should pay the money; for the beating was upon my own body."

"Truly," said the mayor, "and so it was; and therefore it is the harder that thee should have to pay it. But pay it thee must, the man having broken the peace as much in beating thee, as if it had been any other citizen of the commonwealth."

And so much satisfaction I had for befriending the sot; the charity, which did more harm than good even to the man's poor family, since it exposed them a second time to his fury, costing me, without counting the fine paid on the first day, a sore beating and one hundred dollars.

My next misadventure was the being cheated in a very aggravated way by a poor man to whom I loaned money, without exacting bond or voucher, the same being loaned to re-establish him in a gainful business, which had been interrupted by an unfortunate accident. For, having prospered in his business, and I requiring that he should now repay the money, that I might devote it to the service of others, he very impudently averred that he had never had any thing of me, except advice and a good word of recommendation here and there; swore that he never paid away or received a cent without giving or taking a receipt; defied me to prove my claim; and concluded his baseness by threatening to kick me out of his workshop.

These instances of ingratitude were followed by others of a still deeper die, and so numerous, that I can mention only a few of them.

Walking one day to that infant school which I had established, to keep children out of mischief while their hard-working parents were at their daily labours, I perceived the urchins standing at the door, pelting the passers-by with mud. Reproving them for this misconduct, the graceless vagabonds did speedily turn their battery upon myself; and, not content to plaster and bespatter me with mud-balls from head to foot, they fell upon me, and, being very numerous, did actually roll me about in a gutter, where was a deep slough, so that I had nearly perished with suffocation, being sorely bruised into the bargain. To crown all, having expelled from my school the ringleaders in this marvellous outbreaking of precocious ingratitude, I was visited by their parents, all of them abusing me for my tyrannical usage of their children (although, of a truth, the tyranny was all on the side of the juveniles), and impudently demanding that I should pay them for their boys' time, at the rate of twenty-five cents a week each, for as many weeks as I had had them at school. Of a surety, some people are very unreasonable.

It was also my misfortune to offend divers tailors and shopkeepers, by benevolently taking part in the efforts of their poor unfortunate needle-women to obtain better wages; and one day, in the streets, these angry men did hustle me, and tear a tail from my coat. But I consoled myself for this violence, by thinking of the gratitude of the poor creatures I was defending; when, making my way, the following evening, to their place of assembly, I was set upon by the whole crew, for that I did hint, that, as their difficulties did chiefly proceed from their numbers, there being more hands at the business of sewing than were required, they would greatly benefit themselves, and the community too, by going, two thirds of them at least, into service, there being ever a great want of domestics in our respectable families. I say, I did but hint this reasonable and undeniable truth, together with a friendly remark upon the exposed state of their morals, when there arose such a storm among them as was never perhaps witnessed by any other human being. "Hear the old hunks!" said one: "he wants to make niggur servants of us! us, that is freeborn American girls!"-"Yes, ladies!" said another, "and he is insinivating we are no better nor we should be!"-"Turn the old rip out!" said a third; and "Turn him out!" cried the other three hundred and fifty there present. Of a verity, they did assail me with both tongue and nail, testifying such vigour of spirit and strength of arm, that, were I a philanthropist now, which I fortunately am not, and were I moved to consult their interests as before, I should endeavour to form them into a regiment of soldiers, not doubting that they would, at any moment, prevail over twice their numbers of male fighting men. Of a verity, I say, they did violently pull me about, thrusting me at last from the apartment: and their ingratitude was a sore wound to my spirit.

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