BRITISH BENEVOLENCE, BRITISH PLUCK, BRITISH LIBERALITY.

Tuapeka Times, Volume 22, Issue 277, 22 May 1873, Page 7

BRITISH BENEVOLENCE, BRITISH PLUCK, BRITISH LIBERALITY.

; [By Mark Twain.] ekglish good heaktedness. We are ths 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 speech and dress of its people, but the curious kvishness 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 item like this in the papers: — "The (such and such a charity), desires to acknowledge the leceiptof £1,000 from N.Y.Z. This is the fifth £1.000 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 CharingCross 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 Hospital 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? I 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. " Grinx's Baby " could not satirize the national disposition towards free-handed benevolence — it could o)jly satirize instances of foolish and stupid methods in the application of the funds by some of the charitable organizations. 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 sums that individuals have given to the London hospitals. People die of want and starvation in that huge hive, just as they do in New York, merely because nina people in the ten who b?g help are impostors — the worthy and the sensitive shrink from making their condition 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 man) things I saw in London, but I remember yet what an outburst there was, and what a pang seemed to d«u if j thtough 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 band, and such expressions as, {i What a pit}, poor thing, she could have been smothered in money, if a body could only have known her case." You would have supposed an emperor had fallen, and not a mere nameless waif from a far country. This mourning j 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. THE KOYAL NATIONAL LTFE-BOAT INSTITUTION. We know what the Koyal Humane Society is : for it is always at work, and its fame is wide on the earth. Well, England is sown generously with just such institutions — not Government pets but supported entirely by voluntary contributions of the people. And they make no pow-wow ; one does not even see the names of their officers in print. Now there is the Royal National Life Boat Institution, for instance. During the year 1859 it saved 28 vessels, its boats saved 1,072 human lives, it paid in cash rewards for saving life 12,000 dollars gold. It keeps its own boats and boat stations ; has its men on guard night and day under regular salaries and pays them an extra reward for every life saved. Since it first begau its work ifc has saved a fraction under 19.000 lives ; it has conferred 90 gold medals and 807 silver ones ; it has given away 158,000 dols. i in cash rewards for saving life, and has | expended 1,183,330 dollars on its lifeboat statious and life-saving apparatus. And all that money was obtained by voluntary subscriptions. WHAT THE CUNABD CO. DID FOR OUR HEROES. To return to the life boat crew of the "Batava,, 1 the Cunard Steamship Company gave each of the six seamen '< £5 a piece, and promoted third officer Gillies and fourth officer Kyle to the ; rank and pay of first officers ; the said rank and pay to commence, not upon the day we found tbe dismasted vessel, but upon the day our ship left Liverpool for America. Now, how is that for "the clean white thing," as they say in the mountains 1 I have italicised the word " first," for I ask you to understand that that is a perfectly dazzling promotion to achieve with just sixty minutes work — it would have

taken those men ten or twelve years of slow hard work in the Company's service to accomplish that, as matters nsuallv go in that methodical old priva?e navy. Indeed, those practical, hard-headed unvomantic Cunard people wonM not take Noah himself as first mate till they had worked him up through all the lower grades and tried him ten years on such a matter. They make every officer serve an apprentice under their eyes in their own ships before they advance him or trust him. Captain Nouland had been at sea 16 years, and was in command of a big 1,600 ton ship when "they took him into their service ; but they only made him fourth officer, and he had to work up tediously to earn his captaincy. He has been with them 18 years now. Officers Gillies and Kyle had suddenly jumped over a whole regiment of officers' heads and landed within one step of the captaincy, and all in good time they will be promoted that step, too. They hold the rank and receive the pay of first officers now, and will continue to do so, though there are no vacancies at present. But they will fill the first vacancies that occur.