When I got around there the
next morning to see about it, I found that some neighborhood roughs
had established a toll-gate in the alley, charging the pitying
visitors who came in shoals a quarter for admission to the show in
the garret. The man was a fraud. That was right around the corner
from a place where, years before, I used to drop a nickel in a
beggar woman's hand night after night as I went past, because she
had a baby cradled on her wheezy little hand-organ, until one night
the baby rolled into the gutter, and I saw that it was a rag baby,
and that the woman was drunk. It was on such evidence as this, both
as to them and myself, that I early pinned my faith to organized
charity as just orderly charity, and I have found good reasons
since to confirm me in the choice. If any doubt had lingered in my
mind, my experience in helping distribute the relief fund to the
tornado sufferers at Woodhaven a dozen years ago would have dispelled
it. It does seem as if the chance of getting something for nothing
is, on the whole, the greatest temptation one can hold out to frail
human nature, whether in the slum, in Wall Street, or out where
the daisies grow.
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