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5. CHAPTER V.
Which is short and moral, and can therefore be skipped.

I have already said that the mere presence of
the philanthropic feeling, now infused into my
spirit, filled me with happiness, even while I lay
upon my back, aching with wounds and bruises.
It may be inferred, therefore, that my soul was

ecstasy itself, when, restored at last to health and
strength, I stalked into the air, dispensing charity
with both hands.

Of a verity, it was—at least, for a time; and I
will say, that, during the first month of my new
existence, I experienced a thousand agreeable sensations,
such as had never occurred to me in my
whole life before. And here let me observe, that,
if what I have to add shall show that there are
offsets of inconvenience and tribulation even to
the satisfaction of the benevolent, I do not design
to throw any discredit on the virtue of benevolence
itself; which I truly regard as one of the divinest
of endowments, angelic in its nature, and blessed
in its effects, when practised with discretion; and
amiable, if not lovely, even in its folly. I believe,
indeed, that if Heaven looks with peculiar indulgence
on the errors of any man, it is in the case of
him who has the softest judgment for the errors,
and the readiest reparation for the miseries, of his
fellows. What I wish to be understood is, that
man is an unthankful animal, and of such rare
inconsistency of temper, that he seldom foregoes
an opportunity to punish the virtue which he so
loudly applauds.

I was now a philanthropist, and I will say (which
I think I may do without shame, the merit being
less attributable to me than to that worthy deceased
personage whose body I inhabited), that a truer,
purer, or more zealous one never walked the earth.
I should fill a book as big as a family Bible, were I

to record all the good things I did or attempted, while
a tenant in Zachariah Longstraw's body. All my
feelings and desires were swallowed up in one great
passion of philanthropy; universal benevolence
was the maxim I engraved upon my heart; I had
no thought but to relieve the distresses, meliorate
the condition, and advance the happiness of my species.
My generosity extended equally to individuals
and communities; I toiled alike in the service
of the beggar and the million, putting bread into the
mouth of the one, and infusing moral principles into
the breasts of the others. In a word, I was, as I
have called myself already, a philanthropist; and
if my virtue was somewhat excessive in degree, it
proceeded from the sincerest promptings of spirit.