Generalship—See Opinion Changed.
GENEROSITY
A pleasant story about Andrew Carnegie is told by a tourist from Scotland in the New York Tribune:
At Skibo Castle, Mr. Carnegie had during
the summer a beautiful rose-garden. There
were thousands of red and white and yellow
roses always blooming there, and the villagers
were free to saunter in the garden
paths to their hearts' content.
One day the head gardener waited upon Mr. Carnegie. "Sir," he said, "I wish to lodge a complaint." "Well?" said the master. "Well, sir," the gardener began, "I wish to inform you that the village folk are plucking the roses in your rose garden. They are denuding your rose-trees, sir." "Ah," said Mr. Carnegie gently, "my people are fond of flowers, are they, Donald? Then you must plant more." (Text.)
(1190)
There is a beautiful incident connected with the fall of the stronghold of the Cumberland which General Grant was too modest to include in the "Memoirs." Many years after the event, General Buckner, speaking at a Grant birthday gathering, said: "Under these circumstances I surrendered to General Grant. I had at a previous time befriended him, and it has been justly said that he never forgot an act of kindness. I met him on the boat (at the surrender), and he followed me when I went to my quarters. He left the officers of his own army and followed me, with that modest manner peculiar to him, into the shadow, and there he tendered me his purse. It seems to me that in the modesty of his nature he was afraid the light would witness that act of generosity, and sought to hide it from the world."—Col. Nicholas Smith, "Grant, the Man of Mystery."
(1191)
A noble spirit despises pay and money. Garibaldi was always penniless; so, when he had occasion to give, as was constantly the case, he had to borrow or sacrifice personal belongings. Once he brought home an Italian exile, who, he explained, was poorer than himself. "I have two shirts and he has none," and he proposed dividing. But one shirt happened to be in the wash, so, had he stript off the one on his back, as he was wholly capable of doing, the division would still have been unequal. "I have it!" then exclaimed Garibaldi. "There is the red shirt in my trunk that I haven't worn since Rome. He shall have that!" A friend, however, intervened, and the Garibaldian red badge of courage was peremptorily rescued. (Text.)
(1192)
If I were poor, and had no means, and was obliged to throw my remaining days on the generosity of the public for food and clothes and comfort, I should appeal to the Korean, knowing that he would never see me want, would be respectful while generous, and would never be so mean as to cast up my good-for-nothingness to me.—James S. Gale, "Korea in Transition."
(1193)
Of Samuel Johnson, William J. Long in "English Literature" writes:
In all London there was none more kind
to the wretched, and none more ready to extend
an open hand to every struggling man
and woman who crossed his path. When he
passed poor, homeless Arabs sleeping in the
streets he would slip a coin in their hands, in
order that they might have a happy awakening;
for he himself knew well what it
meant to be hungry. Such was Johnson—a
"mass of genuine manhood," as Carlyle
called him, and as such, men loved and
honored him.
(1194)
See Acknowledgment; Humor and
Generosity; Tact.
Generosity Betrayed—See Displacement.
GENEROSITY, CHRISTIAN
If business men generally followed the Golden Rule, after the example of Mr. Frank Crossley, the great promoter of London missions, as indicated below, what a different world this would soon become!
One unfortunate man who had put in one
of Mr. Crossley's engines, and found it too
small, but was unable to replace it, and was
threatened with bankruptcy, found in him a
rare benefactor, who not only replaced the
old engine by a new and larger one without
charge, but actually made up to him the
losses in his business which had resulted
from his own blunder. That man said to
a friend, "I have found a man who treated
me just as Jesus Christ would have done!"
(Text.)—Pierson, "The Miracles of Missions."
(1195)
