<div align="center"><h2><SPAN name="Benefactor">The Benefactor</SPAN></h2></div>
<blockquote>"He is a good man who can receive a gift well."—<big>E</big>MERSON.</blockquote>
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<p>There is a sacredness of humility in such an admission which wins
pardon for all the unlovely things which Emerson has crowded into
a few pages upon "Gifts." Recognizing that his own goodness stopped
short of this exalted point, he pauses for a moment in his able and
bitter self-defence to pay tribute to a generosity he is too honest
to claim. After all, who but Charles Lamb ever <i>did</i> receive gifts
well? Scott tried, to be sure. No man ever sinned less than he against
the law of kindness. But Lamb did not need to try. He had it in his
heart of gold to feel pleasure in the presents which his friends took
pleasure in giving him. The character and quality of the gifts were
not determining factors. We cannot analyze this disposition. We can
only admire it from afar.</p>
<p>"I look upon it as a point of morality to be obliged to those who
endeavour to oblige me," says Sterne; and the sentiment, like most
of Sterne's sentiments, is remarkably graceful. It has all the
freshness of a principle never fagged out by practice. The rugged
fashion in which Emerson lived up to his burdensome ideals prompted
him to less engaging utterances. "It is not the office of a man to
receive gifts," he writes viciously. "How dare you give them? We wish
to be self-sustained. We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that
feeds us is in some danger of being bitten."</p>
<p>Carlyle is almost as disquieting. He searches for, and consequently
finds, unworthy feelings both in the man who gives, and holds himself
to be a benefactor, and in the man who receives, and burdens himself
with a sense of obligation. He professes a stern dislike for presents,
fearing lest they should undermine his moral stability; but a man
so up in morals must have been well aware that he ran no great risk
of parting with his stock in trade. He probably hated getting what
he did not want, and finding himself expected to be grateful for it.
This is a sentiment common to lesser men than Carlyle, and as old
as the oldest gift-bearer. It has furnished food for fables,
inspiration for satirists, and cruel stories at which the
light-hearted laugh. Mr. James Payn used to tell the tale of an
advocate who unwisely saved a client from the gallows which he should
have graced; and the man, inspired by the best of motives, sent his
benefactor from the West Indies a case of pineapples in which a colony
of centipedes had bred so generously that they routed every servant
from the unfortunate lawyer's house, and dwelt hideously and
permanently in his kitchen. "A purchase is cheaper than a gift," says
a wily old Italian proverb, steeped in the wisdom of the centuries.</p>
<p>The principle which prompts the selection of gifts—since selected
they all are by some one—is for the most part a mystery. I never
but once heard any reasonable solution, and that was volunteered by
an old lady who had been listening in silence to a conversation on
the engrossing subject of Christmas presents. It was a conversation
at once animated and depressing. The time was at hand when none of
us could hope to escape these tokens of regard, and the elaborate
and ingenious character of their unfitness was frankly and fairly
discussed. What baffled us was the theory of choice. Suddenly the
old lady flooded this dark problem with light by observing that she
always purchased her presents at bazaars. She said she knew they were
useless, and that nobody wanted them, but that she considered it her
duty to help the bazaars. She had the air of one conscious of
well-doing, and sure of her reward. It did not seem to occur to her
that the reward should, in justice, be passed on with the purchases.
The necessities of charitable organizations called for a sacrifice,
and, rising to the emergency, she sacrificed her friends.</p>
<p>A good many years have passed over our heads since Thackeray launched
his invectives at the Christmas tributes he held in heartiest
hatred,—the books which every season brought in its train, and which
were never meant to be read. Their mission was fulfilled when they
were sent by aunt to niece, by uncle to nephew, by friend to hapless
friend. They were "gift-books" in the exclusive sense of the word.
Thackeray was wont to declare that these vapid, brightly bound
volumes played havoc with the happy homes of England, just as the
New Year bonbons played havoc with the homes of France. Perhaps, of
the two countries, France suffered less. The candy soon disappeared,
leaving only impaired digestions in its wake. The books remained to
encumber shelves, and bore humanity afresh.</p>
<blockquote><i>"Mol, je dis que les bonbons<br/>
Valent mieux que la raison";</i></blockquote>
<p>and they are at least less permanently oppressive. "When thou makest
presents," said old John Fuller, "let them be of such things as will
last long; to the end that they may be in some sort immortal, and
may frequently refresh the memory of the receiver." But this
excellent advice—excellent for the simple and spacious age in which
it was written—presupposes the "immortal" presents to wear well.
Theologians teach us that immortality is not necessarily a blessing.</p>
<p>A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the
undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden
life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example. The
civilized world so teems with elaborate and unlovely inutilities,
with things which seem foreign to any reasonable conditions of
existence, that we are sometimes disposed to envy the savage who
wears all his simple wardrobe without being covered, and who sees
all his simple possessions in a corner of his empty hut. What pleasant
spaces meet the savage eye! What admirable vacancies soothe the
savage soul! No embroidered bag is needed to hold his sponge or his
slippers. No painted box is destined for his postal cards. No
decorated tablet waits for his laundry list. No ornate wall-pocket
yawns for his unpaid bills. He smokes without cigarette-cases. He
dances without cotillion favours. He enjoys all rational diversions,
unfretted by the superfluities with which we have weighted them. Life,
notwithstanding its pleasures, remains endurable to him.</p>
<p>Above all, he does not undermine his own moral integrity by vicarious
benevolence, by helping the needy at his friend's expense. The great
principle of giving away what one does not want to keep is probably
as familiar to the savage as to his civilized, or semi-civilized
brother. That vivacious traveller, Père Huc, tells us he has seen
a Tartar chief at dinner gravely hand over to an underling a piece
of gristle he found himself unable to masticate, and that the gift
was received with every semblance of gratitude and delight. But there
is a simple straightforwardness about an act like this which commends
it to our understanding. The Tartar did not assume the gristle to
be palatable. He did not veil his motives for parting with it. He
did not expand with the emotions of a philanthropist. And he did not
expect the Heavens to smile upon his deed.</p>
<p>One word must be said in behalf of the punctilious giver, of the man
who repays a gift as scrupulously as he returns a blow. He wants to
please, but he is baffled by not knowing, and by not being sympathetic
enough to divine, what his inarticulate friend desires. And if he
does know, he may still vacillate between his friend's sense of the
becoming and his own. The "Spectator," in a mood of unwonted subtlety,
tells us that there is a "mild treachery" in giving what we feel to
be bad, because we are aware that the recipient will think it very
good. If, for example, we hold garnets to be ugly and vulgar, we must
not send them to a friend who considers them rich and splendid. "A
gift should represent common ground."</p>
<p>This is so well said that it sounds like the easy thing it isn't.
Which of us has not nobly striven, and ignobly failed, to preserve
our honest purpose without challenging the taste of our friends? It
is hard to tell what people really prize. Heine begged for a button
from George Sand's trousers, and who shall say whether enthusiasm
or malice prompted the request? Mr. Oscar Browning, who as Master
at Eton must have known whereof he spoke, insisted that it was a
mistake to give a boy a well-bound book if you expected him to read
it. Yet binding plays a conspicuous part in the selection of
Christmas and birthday presents. Dr. Johnson went a step farther,
and said that nobody wanted to read <i>any</i> book which was given to
him;—the mere fact that it was given, instead of being bought,
borrowed, or ravished from a friend's shelves, militated against its
readable qualities. Perhaps the Doctor was thinking of authors'
copies. Otherwise the remark is the most discouraging one on record.</p>
<p>Yet when all the ungracious things have been said and forgotten, when
the hard old proverbs have exhausted their unwelcome wisdom, and we
have smiled wearily over the deeper cynicisms of Richelieu and
Talleyrand, where shall we turn for relief but to Emerson, who has
atoned in his own fashion for the harshness of his own words. It is
not only that he recognizes the goodness of the man who receives a
gift well; but he sees, and sees clearly, that there can be no
question between friends of giving or receiving, no possible room
for generosity or gratitude. "The gift to be true must be the flowing
of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the
waters are at a level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me. All
his are mine, all mine, his."</p>
<p>Critics have been disposed to think that this is an elevation too
lofty for plain human beings to climb, an air too rarified for them
to breathe; and that it ill befitted a man who churlishly resented
the simple, stupid kindnesses of life, to take so sublime a tone,
to claim so fine a virtue. We cannot hope to scale great moral heights
by ignoring petty obligations.</p>
<p>Yet Emerson does not go a step beyond Plato in his conception of the
"level waters" of friendship. He states his position lucidly, and
with a rational understanding of all that it involves. His vision
is wide enough to embrace its everlasting truth. Plato says the same
thing in simpler language. He offers his truth as self-evident, and
in no need of demonstration. When Lysis and Menexenus greet Socrates
at the gymnasia, the philosopher asks which of the two youths is the
elder.</p>
<p>"'That,' said Menexenus, 'is a matter of dispute between us.'</p>
<p>"'And which is the nobler? Is that also a matter of dispute?'</p>
<p>"'Yes, certainly.'</p>
<p>"'And another disputed point is which is the fairer?'</p>
<p>"The two boys laughed.</p>
<p>"'I shall not ask which is the richer, for you are friends, are you
not?'</p>
<p>"'We are friends.'</p>
<p>"'And friends have all things in common, so that one of you can be
no richer than the other, if you say truly that you are friends.'</p>
<p>"They assented, and at that moment Menexenus was called away by some
one who came and said that the master of the gymnasia wanted him."[1]</p>
<p>[Footnote 1: Lysis. Translated by Jowett.]</p>
<p>This is all. To Plato's way of thinking, the situation explained
itself. The two boys could not share their beauty nor their strength,
but money was a thing to pass from hand to hand. It was not, and it
never could be, a matter for competition. The last lesson taught an
Athenian youth was the duty of outstripping his neighbour in the hard
race for wealth.</p>
<p>And where shall we turn for a practical illustration of friendship,
as conceived by Emerson and Plato? Where shall we see the level waters,
the "mine is thine" which we think too exalted for plain living? No
need to search far, and no need to search amid the good and great.
It is a pleasure to find what we seek in the annals of the flagrantly
sinful, of that notorious Duke of Queensberry, "Old Q," who has been
so liberally and justly censured by Wordsworth and Burns, by Leigh
Hunt and Sir George Trevelyan, and who was, in truth, gamester,
roué,—and friend. In the last capacity he was called upon to listen
to the woes of George Selwyn, who, having lost at Newmarket more money
than he could possibly hope to pay, saw ruin staring him in the face.
There is in Selwyn's letter a note of eloquent misery. He was, save
when lulled to sleep in Parliament, a man of many words. There is
in the letter of Lord March (he had not yet succeeded to the
Queensberry title and estates) nothing but a quiet exposition of
Plato's theory of friendship. Selwyn's debts and his friend's money
are intercommunicable. The amount required has been placed that
morning at the banker's. "I depend more," writes Lord March, "upon
the continuance of our friendship than upon anything else in the
world, because I have so many reasons to know you, and I am sure I
know myself. <i>There will be no bankruptcy without we are bankrupt
together.</i>"</p>
<p>Here are the waters flowing on a level, flowing between two men of
the world; one of them great enough to give, without deeming himself
a benefactor, and the other good enough to receive a gift well.</p>
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