“Charity is composed of sympathy and self-sacrifice.  There is no charity without a union of these two,” he said, in an address years ago at Music Hall, Boston.  “To make a gift become a charity the recipient must feel that it is given out of sympathy; that the donor has made a sacrifice to give it; that it is intended only as assistance and not as a permanent support, unless the needy one he helpless; and that it is not given as his right.  To accomplish this end desired by charitable hearts demands an acquaintance with the persons to be assisted or a study of them, and a great degree of caution and patience.  It is not only unnecessary, but a positive wrong to give to itinerant beggars.  There is no such thing as charity about a so-called state charity.  It is statesmanship to rid the community of nuisances, to feed the poor and prevent stealing and robbery, but it should not be called ‘a charity.’  The paupers take their provision as their right, feel no gratitude, acquire no ambition, no industry, no culture.  The state almshouse educates the brain and chills the heart.  It fastens a stigma on the child to hinder and curse it for life.  Any institution supported otherwise than by voluntary contribution, or in the hands of paid public officials, can never have the spirit of charity nor be correctly called a charity.  Boston’s public charitable institutions, so called, are not charities at all; the motive is not sympathy, but necessity.  The money for the support of paupers is not paid with benevolent intentions by the tax-payers, nor do the inmates of almshouses so receive it.  I have been engaged in gathering statistics, and have found sixty-three per cent of all persons who applied for assistance at the various institutions were impostors, while many were swindlers and professional burglars.”

The sick poor are never turned away from Samaritan Hospital, but those who are able to pay are requested to do so.  Dr. Conwell believes it would be a wrong to treat such people free, an injustice to physicians, as well as an encouragement of a wrong spirit in themselves.  The hospital has a number of private rooms in which patients are received for pay.  Many have been furnished by members of Grace Baptist Church in memory of some loved one “gone before,” or by Sunday School classes or church organizations.

It may have been the fact that it started in an ordinary house that gave the Hospital its cheery, homelike atmosphere.  It may have been the spirit of the workers.  But its homelike air is noticeable.  While rules are strictly enforced, as they must be, there is a feeling of personal interest in each patient that makes the sick feel that she is something more than a “case” or a “number.”