There are always well-meaning persons among us ready to direct the charity of others.

We have all met those virtuous persons who do good by proxy.

But Paul had not.

He had never come face to face with the charity broker--the man who stands between the needy and the giver, giving nothing himself, and living on his brokerage, sitting in a comfortable chair, with his feet on a Turkey carpet in his office on a main thoroughfare.

Paul had met none of these, and the only organized charity of which he was cognizant was the great Russian Charity League, betrayed six months earlier to a government which has ever turned its face against education and enlightenment.