Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten o’clock at some little village, and buy ten or fifteen cents’ worth of meal or bacon or other stuff to eat; and sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn’t roosting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don’t want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain’t ever forgot. I never see pap when he didn’t want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway.
– Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 12. Some nights Hucks lands at a nearby town to buy food or on occasions steal a chicken. His father Pap told him that you might as well steal a chicken whenever you can, because if you don’t want it yourself you can give it away.