Well, to please him, I tried to sell, and only raised the rancour of the shopkeepers, who declared I was competing with them as a grocer: then I gave, with the same experience that soup charity had before taught me, to wit, that poor quarrelled with poorer, and both with me, for more or less given.

So I was glad when it all came to an end.

It is very difficult, as many a Lady Bountiful knows, to be charitable on a wide scale: _e.g._ once, in my country life, I tried to recommend brown bread and oatmeal; and got nothing by it but ill-will, as if wishing to starve the poor by denial of wheat-flour.
Most of us have been checked in such silly efforts to do good through forgetfulness of the fact that usually the poorest are the proudest.
Even the luxurious _debris_ of London Club kitchens must be flung into swill-barrels for pigs, because starving men and women will not demean themselves to ask for it at the buttery-hatch.

Moreover, that such are often extravagant too, everybody has found out--here's an instance: In my legal days, I now and then of course relieved poor folk, and sometimes passed through Seven Dials: casually, I looked in upon an old couple to whom I had occasionally given a trifle, believing them to be near starvation; and I found them roasting a brace of partridges--or was it quails?
for they were waistcoated with bacon,--and I had the charity to hope they had _not_ stolen them! Anyhow, I never called there again.
And, while I am in Seven Dials, let me record another useful small experience.

There was a lapidary handy, who had at times cut my beach-found choanites for me.