I am regularly supplied with funds
for this purpose by good women and men in Boston, Salem, Providence,
Brooklyn, and New York. I provide myself with a quantity of bright new
ten-cent and five-cent bills, and, when I think it incumbent, I give
25 or 30 cents, or perhaps 50 cents, and occasionally a still larger
sum to some particular case. As I have started this subject, I
take opportunity to ventilate the financial question. My supplies,
altogether voluntary, mostly confidential, often seeming quite
Providential, were numerous and varied. For instance, there were two
distant and wealthy ladies, sisters, who sent regularly, for two
years, quite heavy sums, enjoining that their names should be kept
secret. The same delicacy was indeed a frequent condition. From
several I had _carte blanche_. Many were entire strangers. From these
sources, during from two to three years, in the manner described, in
the hospitals, I bestowed, as almoner for others, many, many thousands
of dollars. I learn'd one thing conclusively--that beneath all the
ostensible greed and heartlessness of our times there is no end to the
generous benevolence of men and women in the United States, when once
sure of their object. Another thing became clear to me--while _cash_
is not amiss to bring up the rear, tact and magnetic sympathy and
unction are, and ever will be, sovereign still.
ITEMS FROM MY NOTE BOOKS
Some of the half-eras'd, and not over-legible when made, memoranda
of things wanted by one patient or another, will convey quite a fair
idea.
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