Butler citizen. [volume] (Butler, Pa.) 1877-1922, 1880-08-04
BETRAYED CONFIDENCE.

BETRAYED CODFIDENCE.
When bank president defaults or a
railroad corporation goes into bank
ruptcy, the whole country is in a tu-
multi of excitement, and anxious to
learn the result but when an unscrup-
ulous guardian or villainous executor
has trumped up false account against
the estate, and rendered the widow
homeless and wards penniless, there is
no one to say a word or raise hand
in their defense. There was time when
trustees could be relied upon without
bond or guarantee, but now the statute
books are full of laws to enforce the
commission of trusts and to secure the
ends of the trustees appointment, and
yet the unwary scoundrel goes half un-
whipped of justice A man, dealing
only with the ordinary affairs of life
and within the scope of his own enter
prise, seldom portrays either of the
good or bad phases of his character;
but when trust is confded in him
which calls forth the exercise of all his
private virtues, he is thrown into a.cru-
chile which sooner or later will deter
mine the true quality of his metal. A
A villainous executor or guardian will
be sure to entrap himself He may be
shrewd in manipulating accounts, and
practiced in the art of contracting and
expanding items to suit his own per-
sonal advantage, yet his greedy appe-
tite for gain and the chances to cover
up his villainy on the plea of ignorance
or forgetfulness, will lead him into the
snare that the law will be sure to spring
upon him when he makes his final ac-
count. A man who accepts trust left
to him by his dying friend and then
abuses it and takes the money that he
was to faithfully distribute, to fill his
own Golfers, is worse than thief OF
midnight robber against them we take
precaution of lock and key and bank
and safe, but against trusted friend
we have only our confidence How
man can take upon himself sacred
trust, and sit down in his own private
chamber and coolly and deliberately
frame plan to rob lonely widow and
cheat the helpless children out of their
estate is a problem in moral science
whose solution is fearful to determine.
The depths of degradation to which a
man must sink to render himself such
q fiend and monster is hard to be cal
culated, but it is certain that he is only
wanting the opportunities, with the
chances of escape, to commit the foulest
offense in the catalogue of crimes. 1t
would seem to any sensible person.,
even if he considered virtue as mer-
chantable commodity, that the remem-
brance of the honest confidence in his
dead friends face would haunt his ST.
lent chamber and palsy the coward fin
gers that made the false accounts until
he would be over-awed by the iniquity
of bis villainous course, and forced to
'render unto Caesar the things that are
Caesars" But this monster of vice
stcels himself against the best moral
impulse of his depraved nature, seres
his conscience over the second time to
make it doubly callous, nerves himself
with false bravery to meet the eyes OF
honest people, goes out on the streets
with the semblance of man and palms
himself off as a respectable human be-
ing, and no one knows the fostering
mass of moral pollution he conceals in
his heart, until the eyes of the law re-
veals the secret For few paltry dol
lars he forfeits all that is worth living
for. Because he had the opportunity
and believed he would not be detected
he puts his manhood under his feet aud
tramps it into the mud, the pearls of his
honor he casts before swine and they
are destroyed, his integrity he barters
away for the gold in his pocket and his
fidelity he stabs with the weapon with
which he was to guard the interests of
his friends. But the homeless widow
and pcnniless wards are happier than
he Gold cannot ease the pangs OF
conscience or purchase the confidence
and sympathy of friends. What is life
without the respect of those around
you? What wide world we are liv-
ing in when it is not walled with hu-
man sympathy What terrible $50
lation to be shut out from the regard of
all respectable people, and tread life's
narrow lane alone. with ones constant
lv accusing conscience the only moni-
tor? Better stand before the world in
the majesty Of your manhood, ragged
and pcnniless, than with pockets filed
with gold, crouchng sneakingly along
the highway of life with bowed head, lest
the eyes of the world read in your face
the secrets of your shame The way
of the transgressor is hard, and when
thoughts the dying have shall come
and the sun of his life is setting in the
west, the clinking Of the gold falsely
withheld from The widow and child
will sound a requiem on his leaden ears
like the wall of lost souls.
BUTLER, PA, July, 80. X. Y. z.