 | CHAPTER VII.
The sorrows of a philanthropist. Sheppard Lee |  |
7. CHAPTER VII.
The sorrows of a philanthropist.
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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.
| CHAPTER VII.
The sorrows of a philanthropist. Sheppard Lee | |