The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1876-11-29
THE PATH OF VIRTUE.
Tho Sad Story of a Young Mans Crime
Tho Road to Vico.

Tho SRQ Stofy OF B. ouu8 CEl0Ce~
Tho Road to vico.
There is nothing sadder in the itera-
ture of romance than is the story of the
defalcation in the National Park bank.
It is melancholy tragedy in real life,
surpassing, in it's sorrowfu1 details, any
thing that the novelists can invent-a
tragedy, truly, although the sufferers
b, Ellis' sin are still alive; more truly q
tragedy, indeed, because the blow which
he has struck at the persons nearest to
him is OF kind that does not kill the
body.
For eighteen years this man has la
bored to build up reputation which
was worth infinitely more to him and to
the family that he had called about him
than life itself. He had been diligent
and faithful in his business. BE had
grown up with the bank in which he
worked, and had become part OF its
working machinery. He had passed
through all the lower grades OF office
there, and was the most confidently
trusted of the banks officers. The mil
lions in it's vaults were in his sole keep
ing. The president and the cashier
alone we're above him in rank, and they
trusted him implicitly. In the natural
course of events he would have succeed
ed them in Office. His slowly earned
reputation for fidelity had been abund-
antly tested, and it was solid and &C.
cure capital for him. He had been "up
to his elbows in money for years, and
the time had long ago gone by when
there was room for doubt as to his strict
integrity. He was rich; richer thar any
amount of money could make him, be-
cause his wealth was of kind thst no
thief could steal and no adverse fortune
| could take away from him. His salary,
too, was ample, and he had all the
means of comfortable and even of mod
erately luxurious living.
The lust of gold seized him, and tor q
sum which to such man ought to have
seemed paltry, he sold all this. he
threw away his capital, throttled his
honorable reputation, destroyed the re-
suits of patient lifetime's work, aban-
doned the prosperous and happy future
which he had 30 laboriously secured,
and in one minute changed himself from
an honorable man, whose success In life
was already accomplished, into thief
hiding from the officers of the law.
All this is terrible, but this is only
the smaller and less tragic part of the
story. This mnn had for his own some
thing more than wealth, something bet
ter than success. In his Brooklyn home
there were wife and five children, and
the wrong done to them was more terri
BILE than any words of ours can hint.
There is bright boy there, twelveyears
of age, this mans firstborn son, and we
read in the newspapers that when that
hoy saw the story of bis fathers guilt in
the journals he sunk under the blow,
and wept. Who shall picture the agony
which brought those tears9 Who shall
tell, who shall even imagine the crush
ing, bGghting effect of this mans crime
upon the life and soul of that boy ?
The child has been reared to hold in
highest respect those principles OF
fidelity to trust and integrity of charac.
ter which had made his father trusted
and honored officer of great metropoi-
tan bank. His pride in such father as
his was believed to be must have been
the highest Joy of his life, and his
Young ambition must have been to fol-
low in his fathers footsteps, to win tor
himself like reputation, perhaps to
follow his father in the very institution in
which the fathers honors had been won.
The light is all gone out that young
life now. The bright boy, with high
impulses and with the stimulus OF a
fathers conspicuously honorable career
rs motive to earnest effort, has in a
single hour become the son of thief.
His little brothers and sisters are under
the same terrible cloud which over
shadows him and which nothing can
ever remove. The picture is too horri-
bic to contemplate, and yet it thrusts
itself upon the gaze of every father with
depressing, but let us hope with whole
some effect. That poor boy, weeping
over grief that even time cannot as
suage, is much moro truly and much
more terribly the victim Of his fathers
sin than he would have been If he had
fallen dead under q blow from bis
fathers hand. The thought OF him in
his grief is a nightmare from which
there is no escaping; and Ellis reward
for all this tragic work was paltry
sum of money which he may easily
wastein single year.-New York Eve'
ming Post.