Page:Malabari, Behramji M. - Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882).djvu/215

199 NATIVE MENDICANTS:

of the most prominent sights, though none of the pleasantest, that the visitor encounters, is the professional beggar. No people had ever before them higher ideals of charity than the Hindus. As in the new, so in the old world, charity has been the corner-stone of the edifice of Faith. But nowhere, not even in Christian Europe, have the subtler and more potent forms of charity been so fully realised as in the land of the Aryas. It was only in the recent degenerate days that ideas of charity grew vague and puerile till, since the advent of the present century, the spirit of charity has steadily deteriorated. Charity at present signifies the giving away of superfluous wealth to the worthy