English Good-Heartedness.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 185, 27 May 1873, Page 7

English Good-Heartedness.

The following is an extract from one of Mark Twain's letters to the Neva York Tribune: —•

We are the offspring of England ; and so it is pleasant to reflect that the very first thing that astonishes a stranger when he arrives in that country is not its physical features, not the vastness of London, not the peculiarities of its dress and people, but thecnrions lavishness with which that people pour money into the lap of any high and worthy object needing help. It'is not done ostentatiously, but modestly. It comes from nobody knows where" about half the time, but it comes. Every few days you see a brief paragraph like this in the papers:—"The (such and such a charity), desires to acknowledge the receipt y " of £IOOO from N.Y.Z. This is the fifth .£IOOO from the same source." N.Y.Z.

don't give his name ; he just gives his 25,000 dollars and says no more about it. Some hospital will put up a contribution box by the door, and it will capture hundreds and hundreds of pounds from unknown passers-by. The porter of the Clmring-Cioss hospital saw a gentleman stuff something into the contribution-box and pass on. He opened the box to see what it was : it was a roll of bank bills, amounting to 1,250 dols. One day an unknown lady entered Middlesex Hos

pita], and asked leave to go round and talk with the patients, it was found after she had gone : that she had been distributing half-sovereigns among them ; she had squandered 750 dollars there. But why go on 1 ? T got so worked up about charity matters in London that I was near coming away from there ignorant of anything else. I could reel off instances of prodigal charity conferred by stealth in the city till even the Tribune's broad columns would cry for quarter. " Ginx's Baby" could not satirize the national disposition towards free-handed benevolence —it could only satirize instances of foolish and stupid methods in the application of the funds by some of the charitable organisations. But in most cases the great benevolent societies of England manage their affairs admirably. It makes one dizzy to read the long list of enormous suras that individuals'have j given to the London hospitals. People] uieof want and starvation in that 'liuee'

hive just as they do in New York, merely because'nine people in the ten who beg for help are impostors—the worthy and the sensitive shrink from making their conditim'known, and perish without making an appeal. In either city a thousand hands would be stretched forth to save such if the need could be known in time. I have forgotten many things I saw in London, but I remember yet what an outburst there was, and what a pang seemed to dart through the whole heart of England, when a poor, obscure, and penniless American girl threw herself from Waterloo bridge because she was hungry and homeless, and had no friend to turn to. Everybody talked ; everybody said, " Shame, shame!"; all the newspapers were troubled; one heard strong, honest regret on every hand, and such expressions as, " What a pity, poor thing; she could have been smothered in money, if a body could have known her case." You would have supposed an emperor had fallen, and not a mere nameless waif from a far country. This mourning for the late Napoleon "is lifeless and empty compared to it. That girl could have collected a whole fortune in London if she could have come alive again.