Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1885-06-05

.anos OF dollars there, swindling on the
largest scale of m%alfeasance ever witnessed
IN ms country, SO that the new CITY Court
nouse or New York is q monument of mu-
1reipai crime, having cost moro than the
napicoi at Washington or the Parliament
,.ouses OF London, and running the city
oeos from S3s,oOo,0O to $4,000, 900. Now
ne scanos high up in ~millionairedom.
country seats, terraced and arbored and
parterred to the water's brink. Horses
enough to stock a Kings equerry. Grooms
ana postillions in full rig. Wine cellars
enough to make whole Legislatures drunk.
new York politics and finance in his
ves5 pocket. He winked, and officials went
down. he lifted his little finger, and igno-
ramuses took high place. He whispered,
and at Albany and Washington people said
IL numbered. Higher up, and higher up,
until pandemonium seemed about to adj
Journ to this world, and there was SOM
prospect that in the Satanic realm there
would be a change of administration, and
that Apollyon after holding dominion so
long would have an earthly competitor.
10 bring all to a climax, a wedding came
IN The house of that man. Diamonds as
large as hickory nuts. A pin of sixty
diamonds representing sheaves of wheat.
Musicians in a semicircle, half hidden by
a great harp of flowers. Ships of flowers.
forty silver sets, n of them with 24O
pieces. One wedding dress that cost 81 5000.
A famous libertine, who owned several
Long Island Sound steamboats,, and not
long before he was shot for his crimes, sent
as a wedding present to that house n
frosted silver iceberg with representations
OF Arctic bears walking on icicle
handles and ascending the spoons. Never
such a co%nvocation of b%ronzes, of pictures,
of shawls. The highest rate of New York
splendor rolled in upon the scene, and re-
coiled never again to rise so high. But at
the moment when all observation of earth
and hell was concentered upon the scene,
eternal justice, unprecedented in that Won
der OF the American Bar, Charles O'Conor,
got on the track of the offender. First,
arrest; then indictments; then sentence of
twelve years. imprisonment on Blackwell's
Island; then suit against him for $G,OOO,-
600; then Ludlow-street Jail; then return
under the tight grip of the c~onstabulary and
death from a broken heart in a prison cell.
Allowed to go on until all the world learn
ed as never before that the way of the
transgressor is hard, that dishonesty does
not pay permanent dividends, that a man
had better be IN Industrious chair-maker
on days wages than q fraudulent Com
missioner of Public Works with all his
pockets crammed with plumber.
AN HISTORICAL EXAMPLE.
How proudly in history sounded the
name of William the Conqueror, Intimi-
dator of France and Anjou and Brittany,
Victor at Hastings, snatching the English
crown, driving people from their homes
that he might have a game forest, making
a Doomsday Book by which the land was
put under despotic espionage, to avenge
a joke at his obesity; p%roclaiming war,
trampling harvest-fields and vineyards un-
der cavalry hoof until nations were horror
struck. But at that apex of renown, while
he was riding one day his horse put it's fore
foot on q hot cinder and plunged, wound
ing the rider against the pommel of the
saddle so that he died, his son fastening
to England to get the crown before his
fathers breath ceased. The I'm
perial corpse, %coffinless, carried in
q cart, and most of the attendants
leaving it in the street at a fire.
alarm that they might go and see the
conflagration. The burial in the church
built by the Conqueror interrupted by
some one who cried: "Bishop, the man
whom thou hast praised was a robber; the
very ground on which we are standing is
mine, and is the site where my fathers
house Stood. He took it from me by vio-
lence to build this church upon it. I re-
claim it as my right, and in the name of
God 1 forbid you to bury him here or cover
him with my glebe." $50 up,"said the
ambition of William, the Conqueror. $50
up by way of a throne. Go up by way Of
~criminality. Go up by way of revenge"
"Come 1own," says God. "Come down
by the way of a miserable death. Come
down by the way of ignominious obse-
quies. Come dow i'll the sight of all na-
tions. Come clear down. Come forever
down."
So all around us, though on smaller
scale, the wicked are allowed to live so
that their overthrow may be the more i'm
pressive, memorable and climacteric.
And what I say of sin may be said Of
Satan, its author, sometimes called Abad-
don, the dragon, the serpent, Apollyon, the
prince of the power of the air. That there
is a commander-in-chief Of all evil no one
will doubt. Whatever you call him, this
monster is abroad, and only for d~estruc-
tive purposes. My little child of seven
years asked her mother: "Why does not
God kill the devil at nee and nave lone
with it?" In less terse phrase we lave all
asked the same question. 1t is promised
that he shall be put back into the pit and
chained. Why not heave the old mis-
creant into the pit and into the den now?
1t would seem that he has lone enough to
close up the chapter of infamy. His work
in the last half century would make an
appropriate peroration. No; God is going
to let him get to the tip-topo of all endeavor,
and then, while all the earth and all the
solar systems and all constella-
ions and galaxies inc the universe
are watching, hurl him down with
violence and horror enough to teach
five hundred eternities that the most
acute aud prolonged and stupendous re-
bellion against God and righteousness
shall come down into a crash of everlast-
ing ruin. God is not going to do it by
piecemeal, He is not going to do it in