Misplaced Generosity

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 12, 22 March 1906, Page 27

Misplaced Generosity

llt requires a vast deal of courage and charity to be philanthropic,' lemarked Sir Thomas Lipton, apropos of Andicw Carnegie's giving. ' I remember when I was just stalling in business. I was very poor and 'making e^eiy sacrifice to enlarge my little shop. My only assistant was a iboy of fourteen, faithful and willing and honest One day 1 heard him complaining, and with just iff, that his clothes were so shabby that he was ashamed to go to chapel. 1 " There's no chance of my getting a new suit this year,' he told me. '" Dad's out. of work, and it takes all of my wages to pay the rent." ' I thought the matter over, and then took a sovelcign from my carefully-hoarded savings and bought'the boy a stout, warm suit of blue cloth. He was so "grateful that I felt repaid for my sacrifice. But the next day he didn't come to work. I met his mother on the street and asked her the reason. ' "' Why, Mr. Lipton," she said, curtesying, " Jimipie looks so respectable, thanks to you, sir, that I thought I would send him around town to-day to see it he couldn't get a better job." '