"God's loving-kindness is free, therefore we may enjoy it; it is great, therefore we may be satisfied with it; it is immutable, therefore we may rejoice in it."
Same year:
"God's kindness if free and undeserved"
Then, in 1856 (reprinted 1890), we again get a qualified free:
"A good woman is a comfort, like a man. She lacks of him nothing but heat. Thence is her sweetnesse of disposition, which meets his stoutnesse more pleasingly; so wooll meets iron easier than iron; and turnes resisting into embracing.…She leaves the neat youth, telling his lushious tales, and puts back the serving-mans putting forward, with a frown: yet her kindness is free enough to be seen, for it hath no guilt about it…"
https://books.google.com/books?id=MNjtTqS4msEC&pg=PA47&dq=%22kindness+is+free%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwii07G71_yPAxUWvokEHa3lEA4Q6AF6BAgIEAM
Then, in 1922, in the "employees' magazine" of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, reproduced here in full, because of how eloquently it speaks to "kindness is free" as characterizing the affective labor of others.
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