habitable rooms were soon filled to overflowing with widows and orphans,
who went to work with him to cultivate the ground. It was not long before
crippled and invalid soldiers arrived, begging to be allowed to repair the
cloister, and to find a shelter also within its walls. They were set to
work at making brick, the material for which my grandfather had discovered
on his land: and, in about five years, an institution was built, the more
valuable from the fact that none lived there on charity, but all earned
what they needed by cultivating the ground; having first built their own
dwelling, which, at this time, looked like a palace, surrounded by trees,
grass, and flowers. Here, in the evening, the old soldiers sung martial
songs, or told stories of the wars to the orphans gathered about them,
while resting from the labors of the day.

I tell you of this institution so minutely, to prove to you how wrong it
is to provide charitable homes for the poor as we provide them,--homes in
which the charity always humiliates and degrades the individual. Here you
have an instance in which poor crippled invalids and destitute women and
children established and supported themselves, under the guidance of a
clear-headed, benevolent man, who said, "Do what you like, but work for
what you need." He succeeded admirably, though he died a very poor man;
his younger children becoming inmates of the establishment, until they
were adopted by their relatives.

When I visited my grandfather, the "convent," as he insisted on calling
it,--rejecting any name that would have indicated a charitable
institution,--contained about a hundred invalid soldiers, a hundred old
women, and two hundred and fifty orphans. One of the wings of the building
was fitted up as a hospital, and a few of the rooms were occupied by
lunatics. It was my greatest delight to take my grandfather's hand at
noon, as he walked up and down the dining-room, between the long tables,