They know now
that your gift is but a small portion of their right.
And you, O giver! how did you give? With religious joy, as one who
knows that he who loves God cannot fail to love his neighbor as
himself? with joy and freedom, as one who feels that it is the highest
happiness of gift to us that we have something to give again? Didst
thou put thyself into the position of the poor man, and do for him
what thou wouldst have had one who was able to do for thee? Or, with
affability and condescending sweetness, made easy by internal delight
at thine own wondrous virtue, didst thou give five dollars to balance
five hundred spent on thyself? Did you say, "James, I shall expect you
to do right in everything, and to attend to my concerns as I should
myself; and, at the end of the quarter, I will give you my old clothes
and a new pocket-handkerchief, besides seeing that your mother is
provided with fuel against Christmas?"
Line upon line, and precept upon precept, the tender parent expects
from the teacher to whom he confides his child; vigilance unwearied,
day and night, through long years. But he expects the raw Irish girl
or boy to correct, at a single exhortation, the habit of deceiving
those above them, which the expectation of being tyrannized over has
rooted in their race for ages.
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