and the laws of human relation, and it, therefore, affords but little protection against those vagaries and extravagances of belief which have their root in credulity.
Miss Dodge's apology for the women, in the "Atlantic," is a good illustration of this. Keen, brilliant, thoroughly cultivated as she is, she does not seem for a, moment to recognize that the first duty of every woman introduced to Howe's bank was to demand and insist upon the clear evidence of its validity. She does not seem to consider that intelligence or judgment of facts had any function in the affair. Promises certainly extravagant were made, and stories certainly improbable were told, and they were all swallowed without a serious question, but Miss Dodge can see no credulity in it! The notion that the concern was a grand charity appeared so possible, so probable, and so noble, that the poor women were justified in investing in it without any of those precautions that are dictated by universal experience in these matters. Indeed, Miss Dodge seems to think that Howe's bank is a kind of ideal type of beneficence on which this miserable world might well be remodeled. In the good time coming we are entitled to expect boundless largess, and a thundering rate of interest for everybody. She says: "If there had been a great charity at the basis, I do not see how any wiser mode of distribution could have been framed. In view of the inexpressible relief which was afforded in the dozen or so cases of which I learned in the course of the discussion, I feel a thrill of regret whenever I remember that there was nothing in it."
As a matter of probability, that is of evidence as a basis of action, Miss Dodge thinks that eight per cent, a month is not half so incredible or absurd as the working of the present order of nature. With God's government of the world at a paltry six or seven per cent, annually she seems disgusted, declaring, "In regard to general probability I candidly avow that no originality and no magnitude of charity is so incredible as that the Omnipotent Creator of the world should let things go on as they are."
Miss Dodge reasons that the women were excusable for patronizing Mrs. Howe's bank with its magnificent promises because people do actually get benefactions often princely in aU sorts of irregular and improbable ways. Dr. Cullis's Home for Consumptives in the heart of Boston, professedly supported by prayer alone, and the Woman's Faith Home for Incurables, in Brooklyn, supported also as is said by faith and prayer, are thought worth referring to, and she adds, "If Christ could fish up money out of the sea wherewithal to pay his taxes, and if he said, 'He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do,' why should it seem a. thing incredible that he should pluck from the pockets of the rich a hundred-fold or ninety-sixfold the slender means of the deserving poor?"
These are side-considerations for her religious critics, but Miss Dodge thinks that politics teaches the same lesson. She says, "No one can live long and intimately in political circles without being prepared for any development whatever of generosity and magnanimity," Most true! and alike in Howe's bank and in politics we are not to inquire too curiously into the sources of the generosity. It was the pride of Tweed that betook splendid care of his friends, and the magnanimities of political circles are too generally in proportion as politicians are thieves—they are proverbially generous with the public money! But, even where politicians are not thieves, their circles are full of bounties in the shape of offices and patronage that come as chance advantages to the undeserving, like lottery-prizes
