Outside of the really poor, is there such a thing as genuine charity among us?  The church certainly does not demand anything approximating self-sacrifice.  A few dollars will suffice for any appeal.  I am not a professing Christian, but the church regards me tolerantly and takes my money when it can get it.  But how little it gets!  I give frequently—­almost constantly—­but in most instances my giving is less an act of benevolence than the payment of a tax upon my social standing.  I am compelled to give.  If I could not be relied upon to take tickets to charity entertainments and to add my name to the subscription lists for hospitals and relief funds I should lose my caste.  One cannot be too cold a proposition.  I give to these things grudgingly and because I cannot avoid it.

Of course the aggregate amount thus disposed of is really not large and I never feel the loss of it.  Frankly, people of my class rarely inconvenience themselves for the sake of anybody, whether their own immediate friends or the sick, suffering and sorrowful.  It is trite to say that the clerk earning one thousand dollars deprives himself of more in giving away fifty than the man with an income of twenty thousand dollars in giving away five thousand.  It really costs the clerk more to go down into his pocket for that sum than the rich man to draw his check for those thousands.

Where there is necessity for generous and immediate relief I occasionally, but very rarely, contribute two hundred and fifty or five hundred dollars.  My donation is always known and usually is noticed with others of like amount in the daily papers.  I am glad to give the money and I have a sensation of making a substantial sacrifice in doing so.  Obviously, however, it has cost me really nothing!  I spend two hundred and fifty dollars or more every week or so on an evening’s entertainment for fifteen or twenty of my friends and think nothing of it.  It is part of my manner of living, and my manner of living is an advertisement of my success—­and advertising in various subtle ways is a business necessity.  Yet if I give two hundred and fifty dollars to a relief fund I have an inflation of the heart and feel conscious of my generosity.

I can frankly say, therefore, that so far as I am concerned my response to the ordinary appeal for charity is purely perfunctory and largely, if not entirely, dictated by policy; and the sum total of my charities on an income of seventy-five thousand dollars a year is probably less than fifteen hundred dollars, or about two per cent.

Yet, thinking it over dispassionately, I do not conclude from this that I am an exceptionally selfish man.  I believe I represent the average in this respect.  I always respond to minor calls in a way that pleases the recipient and causes a genuine flow of satisfaction in my own breast.  I toss away nickels, dimes and quarters with prodigality; and if one of the office boys feels out of sorts I send him off for a week’s vacation on full pay.  I make small loans to seedy fellows who have known better days and I treat the servants handsomely at Christmas.