The Recompense: A Poem

GIFTS AND GIVING, 269

pass it on; that is, help others when the opportunity offers, and in that way square the debt. If God "loves the cheerful giver," he also loves justice quite as well as he loves mercy, and the old maxim to "be just before we are generous," is worth remembering, especially with the impulsive and those inclined to be over-generous. The truest charity is in putting the needy in a way of honorably helping himself. Then he retains his self-respect and can render back to you due gratitude without envy. In that way, your gift is a benefit, as you would wish it to be; whereas, if your assistance takes away the desire or the ability of the recipient to help himself, it does him a positive injury in that it makes a pauper of him. It is such mistaken charity which crowds a debased humanity into soup-kitchens and kindred institutions of modern mushroom civilization.

When we have done all we can for ourselves, and there is still a dearth of necessities, we can accept the help which the perfect law of The Church provides, with mutual feelings of respect, but the same divinely-revealed code of laws declares that "the idler shall not eat the bread of the laborer."

THE RECOMPENSE.

"The longer on the earth we live. And view the various qualities of men, Seeing how most are fugitive Or fitful gifts at best of now and then. Wind-wavered corpse-lights, daughters of the fen, The more we feel the high, stern featured beauty Of plain devotedness to duty, Steadfast and still, not fed with mortal praise. But finding amplest recompense For life's ungarlanded expense In work done squarely and unwasted days." James Russell Lowell.