broken through the natural rule of giving, which, in a primitive
society, is bounded only by the need of the recipient and the resources
of the giver; and she gets herself into untold trouble when she is
judged by the ethics of that primitive society.

The neighborhood understands the selfish rich people who stay in their
own part of town, where all their associates have shoes and other
things. Such people don't bother themselves about the poor; they are
like the rich landlords of the neighborhood experience. But this lady
visitor, who pretends to be good to the poor, and certainly does talk as
though she were kind-hearted, what does she come for, if she does not
intend to give them things which are so plainly needed?

The visitor says, sometimes, that in holding her poor family so hard to
a standard of thrift she is really breaking down a rule of higher living
which they formerly possessed; that saving, which seems quite
commendable in a comfortable part of town, appears almost criminal in a
poorer quarter where the next-door neighbor needs food, even if the
children of the family do not.

She feels the sordidness of constantly being obliged to urge the
industrial view of life. The benevolent individual of fifty years ago
honestly believed that industry and self-denial in youth would result in
comfortable possessions for old age. It was, indeed, the method he had
practised in his own youth, and by which he had probably obtained
whatever fortune he possessed. He therefore reproved the poor family for
indulging their children, urged them to work long hours, and was utterly
untouched by many scruples which afflict the contemporary charity
visitor. She says sometimes, "Why must I talk always of getting work and
saving money, the things I know nothing about? If it were anything else