Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/366



O do a kindness kindly, to confer a favor with such tact and delicacy that the recipient will not be oppressed by a sense of obligation, is an art. Wherefore is it one so little cultivated by the kind spirits of this world?

There are persons who are quick to execute praiseworthy actions, who take pleasure in works of beneficence, yet who always perform them in a hard, cold way, as though impelled by the promptings of compulsive duty alone.

Individuals of another class bestow their good gifts more graciously, but evidently expect a due acknowledgment; they have the air of requiring "so much for so much," and their undisguised demand for a full measure of thanks often annihilates the very existence of gratitude. You see, at a glance, that they are laying their kind deeds out at usury, and hope for a large income of reward; perhaps in the shape of a wide reputation for goodness; perhaps from the return of some greater benefit than the one conferred; perhaps