CHAPTER II

   “Come often, then; for haply in my bower
   Amusement, knowledge, wisdom, thou may’st gain: 
   If I one soul improve, I have not lived in vain.”—­BEATTIE.

It is not so easy to do good as those who have never attempted it may imagine; and they who without consideration follow the mere instinct of pity, often by their imprudent generosity create evils more pernicious to society than any which they partially remedy.  “Warm Charity, the general friend,” may become the general enemy, unless she consults her head as well as her heart.  Whilst she pleases herself with the idea that she daily feeds hundreds of the poor, she is perhaps preparing want and famine for thousands.  Whilst she delights herself with the anticipation of gratitude for her bounties, she is often exciting only unreasonable expectations, inducing habits of dependence and submission to slavery.

Those who wish to do good should attend to experience, from whom they may receive lessons upon the largest scale that time and numbers can afford.

Madame de Fleury was aware that neither a benevolent disposition nor a large fortune were sufficient to enable her to be of real service, without the constant exercise of her judgment.  She had, therefore, listened with deference to the conversation of well-informed men upon those subjects on which ladies have not always the means or the wish to acquire extensive and accurate knowledge.  Though a Parisian belle, she had read with attention some of those books which are generally thought too dry or too deep for her sex.  Consequently, her benevolence was neither wild in theory nor precipitate nor ostentatious in practice.

Touched with compassion for a little girl whose arm had been accidentally broken, and shocked by the discovery of the confinement and the dangers to which numbers of children in Paris were doomed, she did not make a parade of her sensibility.  She did not talk of her feelings in fine sentences to a circle of opulent admirers, nor did she project for the relief of the little sufferers some magnificent establishment which she could not execute or superintend.  She was contented with attempting only what she had reasonable hopes of accomplishing.

The gift of education she believed to be more advantageous than the gift of money to the poor, as it ensures the means both of future subsistence and happiness.  But the application even of this incontrovertible principle requires caution and judgment.  To crowd numbers of children into a place called a school, to abandon them to the management of any person called a schoolmaster or a schoolmistress, is not sufficient to secure the blessings of a good education.  Madame de Fleury was sensible that the greatest care is necessary in the choice of the person to whom young children are to be entrusted; she knew that only a certain number can be properly directed by one superintendent,