But there would be a more
decisive way of doing good than any of these. You might refuse
the million pounds. That would be a shock to the systems of the
comfortable --a blow struck at the great Money God which would
make it totter; a thrust in defence of pride and freedom such as
had not been seen before. That would be a moral tonic more needed
than all the draughts of your newly endowed hospitals. Will it
ever be administered? Well, perhaps when the D.W.T. club has
grown a little stronger.
Have you heard of the D.W.T.--the Declined- with-Thanks Club?
There are no club rooms and not many members, but the balance
sheet for the last twelve months is wonderful, showing that more
than ?11,000 was refused. The entrance fee is one hundred guineas
and the annual subscription fifty guineas; that is to say, you
must have refused a hundred guineas before you can be elected,
and you are expected to refuse another fifty guineas a year while
you retain membership. It is possible also to compound with a
life refusal, but the sum is not fixed, and remains at the
discretion of the committee.
Baines is a life member. He saved an old lady from being run over
by a motor bus some years ago, and when she died she left him a
legacy of ?1000. Baines wrote to the executors and pointed out
that he did not go about dragging persons from beneath motor
buses as a profession; that, if she had offered him ?1000 at the
time, he would have refused it, not being in the habit of
accepting money from strangers, still less from women; and that
he did not see that the fact of the money being offered two years
later in a will made the slightest difference.
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