Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/229

 benevolence, would receive nothing but a rude repulse. Lady Hester said to me, "Do you suppose, doctor, I don't know that many people think I fool away my money in giving it to adventurers? that others say I am capricious? that some call me mad? Why, let them: I am not bound to give reasons for what I do to anybody. The good I do, first of all, I don't wish to be known: and, again, many times the publicity of an act of charity would be injurious to him it was intended to serve. I'll give you an instance.  There was a merchant at Acre, who was avanized by Abdallah Pasha, to whom he was obnoxious, until all his property was squeezed out of him, and nothing was left but a house, of which he was not generally known to be the proprietor—for, had it been known that the house was his, the Pasha, who fancied he had reduced him to beggary, would have persecuted him until he had got that also. The man wished to sell his house, and then to retire into Egypt; he therefore came to me, and told me his story, begging my assistance. As I was obliged to use an interpreter, who, I feared, would talk of any act of kindness of mine for the man, it appeared to me that the best thing I could do was to turn the applicant roughly out of doors,