“AN OBJECT LESSON IN CHARITY.”
RECENTLY a lineman in the employ of a telegraph company in New York City met his death by coming in contact with a charged electric light wire. Referring to this same occurrence, the New York World of October 13 tells the following touching story:— “Yesterday a good-sized money box was fastened to the telegraph pole at the corner of Chambers and Centre Streets, near the spot where poor Lineman Feeks met his fate. Above it was a placard calling for aid for the family of the deceased. At noon, when the working people were going to their dinners, and at the hour their day’s labor was ended, it required a sturdy policeman to keep the surging crowd back from the box, and to form them into something like an orderly line so that each might contribute his mite to so worthy a cause. “It was an interesting and a suggestive sight to see these toilers, evidently possessing no more than they needed for their own necessities, eagerly extending relief out of their earnings to the bereaved widow and children of an unfortunate fellow-laborer. It served to show that men’s feelings are most deeply stirred by matters which concern those in their own condition of life; that it is the poor man who feels the most deeply for the poor, the sufferer who has the most sympathy with the suffering, the unfortunate who is the most moved by compassion for the afflicted. “Of course many broadcloth coats worked their way up to the subscription box, and some bills passed through the opening. But the great majority of givers wore the garb of laboring men, although their hearts were cased in golden sympathy and charity. The spectacle was calculated to make converts to the belief that the poor are more generous than the rich. We have many grand charities in our city, it is true, and our rich citizens are occasionally noble in their benevolence. But is it not also true that great wealth too often creates that insensibility which ‘wraps a man up in himself and his own concerns, and prevents his being moved with either the joys or the sorrows of another’?”