trace the development of the mental suggestions thus received. When A
discovers that B, who is very little worse off than he, receives good
things from an inexhaustible supply intended for the poor at large, he
feels that he too has a claim for his share, and step by step there is
developed the competitive spirit which so horrifies charity visitors
when it shows itself in a tendency to "work" the relief-giving agencies.

The most serious effect upon the poor comes when dependence upon the
charitable society is substituted for the natural outgoing of human love
and sympathy, which, happily, we all possess in some degree. The
spontaneous impulse to sit up all night with the neighbor's sick child
is turned into righteous indignation against the district nurse,
because she goes home at six o'clock, and doesn't do it herself. Or the
kindness which would have prompted the quick purchase of much needed
medicine is transformed into a voluble scoring of the dispensary,
because it gives prescriptions and not drugs; and "who can get well on a
piece of paper?"

If a poor woman knows that her neighbor next door has no shoes, she is
quite willing to lend her own, that her neighbor may go decently to
mass, or to work; for she knows the smallest item about the scanty
wardrobe, and cheerfully helps out. When the charity visitor comes in,
all the neighbors are baffled as to what her circumstances may be. They
know she does not need a new pair of shoes, and rather suspect that she
has a dozen pairs at home; which, indeed, she sometimes has. They
imagine untold stores which they may call upon, and her most generous
gift is considered niggardly, compared with what she might do. She ought
to get new shoes for the family all round, "she sees well enough that
they need them." It is no more than the neighbor herself would do, has
practically done, when she lent her own shoes. The charity visitor has