Tact is the key to real generosity: tact, and real thought for the person you are giving the present to. You can buy anyone a picture by a fashionable and expensive artist, if you can afford it; but it might be kinder to spend a tenth of the amount--and a bit of trouble on getting the framed original of a cartoon you know has cheered them up at a bad time. Anyone can buy a man a gold watch; but it takes a generous wife to do what one lately did, and track down an antique gold strap which precisely fits the old one he inherited from his beloved father.

Conversely, it is not generous to keep pressing expensive drinks on people who really want a half-pint of bitter. ("Co on! Have another! Tell you what, have a double brandy! The best brandy!" ) It is harassment. So is refusing to let someone pay their half of the taxi if it makes them feel small. Buying someone a bottle of the very best champagne when they don't particularly like champagne is pointless; so is giving them a negligee, or sweater, which you would like to see them in but which they are going to hate. Until courting couples learn this rule, girls will go on ending up with drawersful of unwearable slippery camisoles in lurid colours, and men with racks of acutely embarrassing ties. On the other hand, this kind of present does give the recipient an opportunity to show another kind of generosity by selflessly pretending to appreciate it. In the Agatha Christie novel The Hollow, Henrietta displays remarkable kindness towards a shy, unintellectual woman who isn't fitting in to a sparkling houseparty. Greta is wearing a dreadful cardigan she knitted herself; Henrietta not only praises it, but asks for the pattern. Having got the pattern, moreover, she heroically knits the dreadful thing and wears it herself next time she meets Greta. That is what I call follow-through. So is the wedding present a friend got from a broke but domestic sister-in-law: she promised to bake her a loaf of special, delicious wholemeal bread every week for the first year of her marriage, and did so. 

You can give people to other people, too. Matchmaking for single friends can be done in a disastrously tactless way which makes both parties cringe; but there are circumstances--not necessarily romantic ones--when a well-timed introduction can be the best thing you can do for anybody. The best present you can give to a woman expecting her first baby, for example, is to introduce her to another like-minded pregnant woman, who lives reasonably close by. They will keep one another sane for the first chaotic year. And if you do happen to be of the type who networks professionally, and gives power dinner-parties, it would be a generous thing to remember sometimes to invite younger people in the field, who are looking for jobs or contacts or merely for stimulation and inspiration. One of the kindest things anyone ever did for me was an elderly, very distinguished don who introduced me to the world's most encouraging literary agent when I was 21. He shouldn't have gone to all the trouble, I said blushingly; but I was glad he had. And that is the test of any real present: the thoughtfulness, not the wrapping.

“礼物”一词近来已被危险地贬值了。推销员用所谓的免费赠品作为诱饵，公关人员用它们来行贿；富人们可以制造“礼物”送给他们的子女或捐给慈善团体，这与避免上税一样都没有什么高尚的动机。标有礼品店或礼品目录的任何东西通常可以保证入目全是奇异的、滑稽的物品，如个人用纯银痒痒挠和音乐烟灰缸----因为精神正常的人都不会买来自用，所以它们只好被划归为“礼品”。

今年圣诞节我们需要还这个词本来的面目。我们也需要还“慷慨”这个同本来的面目，因为这个词在食品、宾馆毛巾、床单大小或胖得快要撑破衣裳的女人的绝大部分意思上用得太泛太滥了。慷慨----即出于谦恭和爱心赠送真正意义的礼物而不期望任何回报的能力----是最使我们人之所以为人的一个方面。你没有发现猪或狮子彼此赠送亲切的小礼品吧？猴子似乎有时互相帮助捉跳蚤，但是这并不在任何可以证明的善意的范畴内。与现在所做的相比，我们应该对慷慨表示更多的敬意。