The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1879-07-30
A Story without a Moral.

A Story without q Moral.
A story has gone the rounds of the
papers about certain good-hearted
young fellow named Skinner, who, ten
years ago, was kind TO an unknown man
from Antigua. The other day this
stranger died, leaving to John Skinner
$3.50, 900. Another story, which we be-
lieve to be true, was told lately of q
young female school teacher who was
travelling two years ago on the Pennsyl-
vania railroad, when another woman,
apparently as poor as herself, was sud-
denly taken i'll. The girl delayed her
journey for day or two to nurse the
stranger at an inn, and then went on her
way, and heard of the incident no more
until last September, when she received
information that she was the heir to a
fortune which would make her com
Portable for the rest of her life.
The newspapers have been passing
around these cheering anecdotes as
stories with moral. We are not quite
sure what the moral is. If it is that we
are all to become amiable or benevolent
in the certainty of a good fat annuity
from fate in hard dollars, the moral is n
delusion and snare. Your lucky Skin
ner is one white elephant in herd of n
million. The good Samaritan paid cash
for the oil and wine, and was by so much
out of pocket but we are not tod that
his neighbor whom he succored ever re-
imbursed him for the same. We are not
even told that he paid him by a decent
amount of gratitude. If we should hold
up John SINNERS good luck to our
readers as a specimen of the ordinary
dealings of destiny with the charitable,
every one of them would produce 100
ornA1 fo11Axu-g ho los
open hands and lean pockets "He that
giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord, !"
we all know; but it would be bad policy
to invest in charitywith the expectation
that payment would be made in cash,
and with Skinner's 10000 or so per cent.
at that.
Look about in any village, and it is
your old Griper who owns the control
ling shares of the bank stock and the
heavy end OF the local railway. Money
making chances come to him as nevis
drift to the big limpet in the pool Take
his neighbor, the man best known for
benevolence in the town, and where are
his shares of bank or railway stockP
Who leaves him legacyp The very
qualities which make him genial, credu-
lous, generous, render him bad busi-
ness man. His is one of those families
which money seems to shun; his sons
turn out half-starved clergymen; his
daughters marry into houses bare of
everything but love; it is on the farm
next to his that oil IS struck; he inva-
riably just grazes good fortune, but he
never hits it. Yet the public draw on
him as freely as they would from the
town pump. Every case of misery or
want in the county comes straight to
him, to drain on his sympathy and
purse. This mans lot is the one to hold
up to boys as the result of Good Samari-
tanism; not the mythical Skinner's, with
his gorged pockets.
To show it TO them fairly, though, it
is just to state that this man is never
torsaken, never comes to want; his chill
promise of Holy Writ is passed to him
who lends to the poor. You must show
them, too, the real possession which is
given to him in lieu of Griper's stocks
and bonds. You will find no trace of it
in his bare house or shabby clothes; but
it is limited in the tones of his voice
The content of this great possession is in
his dead face, as he lies with his old
friends about him-the widow and the
tatherless and the poor that he has de-
lvered. The payment made to such
men is intangible; itholds no place in the
market; yet the splendor of it shines in
their homes and out of their graves like
a light in dark place; it has made that
little deed of the Good Samaritan a
beacon through all the ages; it is all that
makes house, or village, or the world
itself q happy home for human beings
instead of a den of greedy, selfish beasts.
Let us teach charity, good fellowship,
let us teach them, too, what the reward
is to be; not Skinner's, but a price
which makes his paltry thousands
matter of Indifference. - MeU York
Tribune.