In the midst of general relations of contract—­of agreed pay for agreed service, tipping is an anomaly and a constant puzzle.

It would seem strange, if it were not true of the greater questions of the same kind, that in the chronic discussion of this one, so little attention, if any, has been paid to what may be the fundamental line of division between the two sides—­namely, the distinction between ideal ethics and practical ethics.

An illustration or two will help explain that distinction: 

First illustration:  “Thou shalt not kill” which is ideal ethics in an ideal world of peace.  Practical ethics in the real world are illustrated in Washington and Lee, who for having killed their thousands, are placed beside the saints!

Second illustration:  Obey the laws and tell the truth.  This is ideal ethics, which our very legislatures do much to prevent being practical.  For instance; they ignore the fact that in the present state of morality, taxes on personal property can be collected from virtually nobody but widows and orphans who have no one to evade the taxes for them.  So the legislatures continue the attempt to tax personal property, and a judge on the bench says that a man who lies about his personal taxes shall not on that account be held an unreliable witness in other matters.

Or to take an illustration less radical:  it is not in legal testimony alone that ideal ethics require everybody to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—­that the world should have as much truth as possible; and if the world were perfectly kind, perfectly honest and perfectly wise (which last involves the first two), that ideal could be realized.  For instance, in our imperfect world a man telling people when he did not like them, would be constantly giving needless pain and making needless enemies, whereas in an ideal world—­made up of perfect people, there would be nobody to dislike, or, pardon the Hibernicism, if there were, the whole truth could be told without causing pain or enmity.  Or again, in a world where there are dishonest people, a man telling everything about his schemes, would have them run away with by others, though in an ideal world, where there were no dishonest people, he could speak freely.  In fact, the necessity of reticence in this connection does not even depend on the existence of dishonesty:  for in a world where people have to look out for themselves, instead of everybody looking out for everybody else, a man exposing his plans might hurry the execution of competing plans on the part of perfectly honest people.

Farther illustration may be sufficiently furnished by the topic in hand.

In the case of most poor folks other than servants, what to do about it has lately been pretty distinctly settled:  the religion of pauperization is pretty generally set aside:  almsgiving, the authorities on ethics now generally hold, should be restricted to deserving cases—­to people incapacitated by constitution or circumstance from taking proper care of themselves.