I might make it twenty-four--I s'pose some might hang on to it overnight--but I guess on the whole it's safer to call it fourteen an' three-quarters." "Well," returned Doctor Prescott, "what then, Mr.Lamb ?" "Give it back again," said Ozias, shortly.
Squire Eben Merritt gave a great shout of mirth.

"By the Lord Harry," he cried, "that's an idea!" "It is an entirely erroneous system of charity which you propose, Mr.
Lamb," said Doctor Prescott; "such a constant disturbance and shifting of the property balance would shake the financial basis of the whole country.

Our present system of one public charity, to include all the poor of the town, is the only available one, in the judgment of the ablest philanthropists in the country." Ozias Lamb got off his keg, straightened his bowed shoulders as well as he was able, and raised his right hand.

"You call the poorhouse righteous charity, do ye, Doctor Seth Prescott ?" he demanded.

"You call it givin' in the name of the Lord ?" Doctor Prescott made no response; indeed, Ozias did not wait for one.
He plunged on in a very fury of crude oratory.
"It ain't charity!" he cried.